Let Us Eat Celtuce

For the last couple of weeks, there has been some celtuce on the share table. You might be asking yourself, what the heck is celtuce? Your Friendly CSA Blog is here to help. Celtuce is a cultivar (cross) of—yes, you guessed it—celery and lettuce. It is also known as celery lettuce or Chinese lettuce; the Chinese themselves call it wosun. They seem to like it a lot, so not surprisingly, one of the most common uses for celtuce is in stir fry. The stems are eaten cooked or raw; the leaves are used in the recipe below, and they can be used for lettuce soup, but they are not generally considered to be of salad quality. (Which is okay, considering how much lettuce we have this week . . .)

Celtuce is a mild-tasting vegetable, so you might want to use some things with a bit more taste in your stir fry to give it some zing. For example, slice and add some of those green onions, radishes, or green garlic along with the celtuce, and add some pan-seared scallops. Serve over cooked pasta. Yum!

Celtuce and Pan-Seared Scallops Stir Fry

Celtuce stem, rinsed, sliced, and blanched*
Celtuce leaves
2 green onions, thinly sliced
Chopped green garlic to taste
1 long radish, thinly sliced
6 scallops, dab dry with paper towels then seasoned with black pepper (and salt if you must)
2 servings of your choice of cooked pasta
2 tablespoons oil

Heat oil in a wok and fry the green onions and green garlic until slightly brown. Remove them from oil in the wok and add them to the blanched celtuce stem; set aside.

Pan sear the scallops on both sides until thoroughly cooked, then remove them from the wok and set aside. With the scallop "juice" remaining in the wok, add the sliced radishes and celtuce leaves to stir fry. When the leaves are cooked (it doesn't take long), toss them and the still somewhat crispy radishes with the celtuce stems, green onions, and garlic. Arrange over cooked pasta, top with scallops, and serve. (Makes two servings.)

*Remove the leaves of the celtuce, then peel the fibrous skin of the stems, and slice thinly. Blanche the sliced stems, drain, and set aside. Rinse the leaves and set aside.