Cooks- this way please!

[BertrandRussell]

I went to an amazing restaurant yesterday, and I really want to try and recreate a couple of the dishes. One was a green salad. They had done something to some little gem lettuce so it looked like lettuce that had been dipped in boiling water (sort of transparent-y waxy) but incredibly crisp and like the best lettuce you ever ate. I’ve boiling water then straight into iced water and it looked right but was floppy and tasted watery. Any ideas?

Could it have perhaps been a thin coat of some sort of oil instead? The leaves may have been brushed with it...?

I wondered about that but no trace of oily ness. I think it’s probably some bastard cheffy trick involving liquid nitrogen......

How was the salad described?

It was a very cool/trendy restaurant. So “Green salad”

Have you tried just putting it in iced water?

Yes. It’s hard to describe. Imagine artificial lettuce leaves that tastead like essence of lettuce. I feel like a poncy git on a food programme....

Where was it? If I can identify the chef I may be able to track down technique.

Was it the sort of restaurant that would have a cookbook? There’s a passing chance I’ve got a copy I could look up for you.

Was it definitely just lettuce and not e.g puréed lettuce frozen/jellied etc and then set onto an iceberg lettuce leaf?

Yep-definitely not puréed and extruded!

No cook book,sadly.

It was Pirilla in Newington. Starting to rewatch Great British Menu in case rhe secret is revealed!

Oh god, he's ex-Noma, it was probably fermented in puffin juice or something.

grin There was loads of other stuff I was prepared just to eat and say “yep- puffin juice- delicious. Next delicious thing please” But I really want to know what he did to that lettuce!

Shameless placemarking.

Hmm I wonder if it's dipped in some kind of sugar syrup maybe?

Sorry, went to bed. I have a book by Rene Redzepi of Noma, I’ll go and see if he has lettuce rules therein.

Noma book no help, really. They grill lettuce to serve it with hazelnut milk. So far so ordinary, but it looks like they also prepare the roots to serve with shaved unripe strawberries. (That can't be right, but I've left the house now...)

Lettuce roots and unripe strawberries- presumably it’s the puffin juice that transforms it?

I’ve tried freezing lettuce - that was a bad idea. And I am rewatching the GBM the chef was in in case he makes it on that.

In other news, I’ve successfully made beurre noisette. Very delicious.

Could you telephone the restaurant and ask?
I managed to get the ingredients for a dish from a Michelin-starred chef, but not the proportions. It took me about 3 attempts to recreate, but I managed it.