Dried Shrimp and Pickled Lettuce Salad

Occasionally you pick up a cookbook at random. You park it on your “to read” shelf with every intention of getting around to it. Meanwhile, various disasters transpire: dental work, feline illness, neighbor drama, spousal sickness, inept national leadership, world mayhem.

Finally you open the cookbook. There, glimmering, is the recipe you wish to prepare.

Why this recipe and not another? Who knows? Why should recipe choice make sense when nothing else does? Never mind. Off you go to 99 Ranch in search of pickled lettuce and extra-large dried shrimp.

Are these shrimp sustainable? Are they local?

Unlikely on both counts.

Uneasily pushing these thoughts aside, you head home.

—

If, like me, you graduated Alice Waters University, whose vegetal requirements include quivering freshness, rigorous seasonality, and a local pedigree, pickled lettuce may come as a shock.

First there is the matter of appearances. Pickled lettuce is decidedly drab stuff.

Nor is pickled lettuce the leafy stuff one dresses with artisanal olive oil and pricey balsamic. It’s actually celtuce, a lettuce variety popular in China. Raw or processed, celtuce is delicately flavored, with a snappy texture that isn’t lost in processing. Packed in a brine of sugar and soy sauce, it is mild-tasting, sweet, salty, and completely addictive.

The recipe comes from Thai Cooking from the Siam Cuisine Restaurant, by Kwanruan Aksomboon, Somchai Aksomboom, and Diana Hiranga. The Aksombooms ran the now-closed Siam Cuisine, in Berkeley, California.

Published in 1989, Thai Cooking predates the glossy cookbook explosion and widespread foodiemania. The authors patiently explain ingredients like lemongrass, coconut milk, and dried shrimp–ingredients many of us had neither heard of nor tasted thirty years ago.

Ingredients many of us consider commonplace today.

The authors tell us when Mrs. Aksumboom makes this dish at home, she adds more chili peppers and lime juice. The recipe has “been toned down for the book.”

I suspect this is a polite way of saying some Western eaters are wusses in the chili department.

This delicious salad requires no cooking, a boon when temperatures are in the triple digits and your home lacks conditioning (cough). It keeps beautifully in the fridge for a couple days and while I do not eat Dried Shrimp and Pickled Lettuce Salad for breakfast, I can attest to its being a divine lunch.