Cool as Iceberg

“I’m proud to love it, and I have always loved it,” Nancy Silverton, the Los Angeles-based chef, restaurateur, and cookbook author, said. “It’s something I absolutely crave.”Was Ms. Silverton — a multiple James Beard Award winner — referring to caviar? White truffles? Perhaps a rare Bordeaux?Nope. She was waxing rhapsodic about iceberg lettuce.That’s right, iceberg — notorious as a middlebrow object of ridicule, and the bane of salad snobs everywhere. In a world increasingly populated by designer lettuces — arugula, escarole, oak leaf — serious foodies routinely dismiss iceberg as the produce aisle equivalent of cream of mushroom soup.That’s a shame, because iceberg lettuce deserves more respect than it gets. It’s crisp and refreshing, especially on a hot summer day, when a nice chopped iceberg salad is a much better restorative than a bowl of limp, heatwilted greens. And while iceberg’s flavor is much less assertive than that of other lettuces, that allows iceberg to be an excellent foil for other salad elements and for dressings. Indeed, a case can be made that iceberg is the most underrated player, and certainly the most misunderstood, in the salad world. As Ms. Silverton unapologetically declared, “It doesn’t need to compete with arugula or mesclun — it’s its own thing.”Let’s start with the name. The term “iceberg” has nothing to do with the lettuce’s appearance, texture, or flavor. It came about in the 1920s, when carts of crisphead lettuce (the real name for this cultivar) were packed with lots of crushed ice for shipping. Someone quipped that the carts looked like icebergs, and the name stuck.The most common criticisms you hear about iceberg lettuce, aside from its mild flavor, are that it’s not as nutritious as other salad greens (true, but it’s not like it’s bad for you, and there are plenty of nutrients in the rest of your tossed salad) and that it’s all water. And yes, iceberg’s moisture content is about 90%. But so what? Celery is mostly water — hello, watermelon is mostly water! That’s why they’re so refreshing. So why all the scorn for iceberg?“It starts with a lot of chefs,” Kenny Callaghan, the executive chef at Blue Smoke, which has had an iceberg salad on the menu since opening five years ago, said. “They think of it as the lettuce you find at the salad bar at the Olive Garden.”Matt Hughes, executive chef at the Blue Water Grill, agreed. “It gets a bad rap,” he said. “I look at it like American cheese: Nobody wants to say they eat that, but everyone likes it. And why not? Iceberg’s got a neutral flavor, it’s crunchy, it doesn’t wilt like the leafier lettuces.”Many restaurants around town offer a wedge of iceberg topped with gobs of blue cheese dressing, which basically reduces the lettuce to a dressing delivery device. But Mr. Hughes is more creative: He uses wedges of baby iceberg topped with ice wine vinegar, and he also uses iceberg for his lettuce wrap appetizers. “It’s good because it doesn’t overpower the flavor of what’s inside, like spicy rock shrimp,” he said. “It may not have the best marketing value, but when done right, you can really impress people with it.”Still skeptical? Ms. Silverton says the answer may be to look at farmers’ markets, where some vendors offer iceberg alongside their more exotic cultivars. “There’s better iceberg than just the supermarket kind,” she said. “Some small growers grow some organic varieties, which have a more mineral-y flavor.”But whether organic or mass-produced, iceberg has one major advantage over other lettuces: its resilience. “Once you put oil and vinegar on, say, arugula, its shelf life is literally just minutes, because the lettuce just isn’t hearty enough,” Mr. Callaghan, the Blue Smoke chef, said. But iceberg can hold up to dressing without wilting.”That sturdiness makes iceberg suitable for treatments that would be unthinkable with other lettuces, including a quick toss on the grill. That’s what Mr. Hughes, the Blue Water Grill chef, likes to do this time of year.“You cut it in half or in wedges, brush it with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and give it a quick sear on the grill to get that char and smoke in there,” he explained. “Then break it up. It brings a whole new dimension to the salad.”So has he ever done this at his restaurant?“We did,” he said, his voice suddenly sounding sheepish. “But with romaine.” Old prejudices, it seems, can be hard to overcome.

Cool as Iceberg

Cool as Iceberg

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