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Drawing from a popular New York restaurant, the groundbreaking method transforms usually thrown-out outer salad greens into an luxurious green “mayonnaise”. This is a ingenious approach to minimize leftovers while making a condiment tasty and flexible.

The Reason Use External Salad Greens?

These external greens are nature’s protective wrapping, guarding the delicate inside lettuce. While composting vegetable trimmings is one basic zero-waste habit, discovering new applications for these parts is additionally beneficial. Turning excess ingredients into fertile compost prevents landfill buildup, where it may emit greenhouse gases, a potent climate issue.

It’s quite radical when you think about it: produce decomposes and transforms into that perfect growing medium to feed further crops, thereby completing this loop and respecting the process of life.

However, given more than 30% surplus produce being produced than needed, consuming valuable resources wisely becomes essential. Minimizing leftovers not only conserves cash but also promotes the increasingly sustainable lifestyle.

This Green Emulsion Method

The versatile recipe functions with whatever variety of lettuce and seeds. By using a whole egg, one avoid any hassle to repurpose the extra egg white. This result is an creamy, rich sauce that works perfectly with greens, grilled veggies, seared chicken, pasta, or rice.

Serves 2

For the Green Emulsion (Makes about 200 grams)

• 100g butter
• 50 grams outer salad greens from two romaine or butter lettuce, washed and dried
• 20g shelled salted nuts – white nuts like blanched almonds help maintain a vivid color, though whatever nuts will do
• One small whole egg

For the Salad

• Two little gem lettuces, split longwise
• Cold-pressed oil, to taste
• Lemon juice or apple cider vinegar, to taste
• 1 small bunch soft greens (like chervil), leaves picked intact, stalks finely minced

Instructions

First making the emulsion. Melt the fat in a small pot, add the outer salad leaves, cover and wilt for approximately 60 seconds, stirring once or twice, till they’ve wilted. Transfer this mixture into a jug of an stick processor, add the nuts and egg, then process until creamy. If needed, incorporate more nuts to get a mayonnaise-like consistency. Store in an airtight jar in the refrigerator for as long as three days.

For assemble the dish, drizzle each lettuce half with olive oil and acid, then season generously. Dress with one zigzag pattern of the green emulsion, then top with the greens. Arrange on two dishes and enjoy immediately.