Tender are the greens

MAYBE they’d had just one too many plates of mizuna or mesclun, but sometime last summer, chefs began putting butter lettuce on restaurant menus as if they’d just discovered the stuff. Now it seems that every restaurant in town has a salad of butter lettuce.

We’ve spotted butter lettuce salads everywhere -- the landmark Campanile, the new Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City and eat. on sunset in Hollywood. They’ve shown up on menus at places as different as Tower Bar, Ammo, Grace and Jar in L.A., and at Biggs in Long Beach.

Tender and almost creamy in texture, articulated like a large open rose, butter lettuce is a salad classicist’s dream -- substantial enough to carry (literally) the compositional weight of the other ingredients, yet subtle enough to blend into the background when needed.

It has a beautiful purity, which is perhaps one reason why it’s getting more attention lately than its fancier cousins.

Butter lettuce appears under several different names -- Boston lettuce, bibb, butterhead, limestone.

But it’s all the same thing: delicate in flavor, clean and only vaguely crunchy, and enormously versatile.

“Texture’s very important in a one-lettuce salad,” says Ben Ford of Ford’s Filling Station, who has a jazzy BLT-inspired butter lettuce salad.

He notes that butter lettuce has a good amount of flavor and holds up to the dressing he pairs it with, a heady bacon-shallot vinaigrette that he uses almost like a dipping sauce.

“Melted” tomatoes (Romas roasted in olive oil) and shaved hard-boiled eggs are the salad’s other components. The buttery taste of the lettuce offsets the egg and bacon the same way brioche matches up to caviar.

It’s butter lettuce’s texture that chefs uniformly praise. At Ammo, chef Amy Sweeney loves it too. Her salad incorporates Cowgirl Creamery feta and blood-orange vinaigrette. It’s a market salad, with leaves of fresh Coleman Farms red butter lettuce looking as if Peter Rabbit ran with a watercolor brush through the garden rows.

In addition to the tangy feta, there are cool, fresh mint leaves, salty toasted pistachios and velvety golden beets, with pieces of blood orange helping marry the flavors and adding zing.

The red butter lettuce is different not only in color -- it’s also a little softer, with leaves that are more corrugated than the green variety. And Sweeney is certain that it’s slightly more flavorful than the green kind.

Butter lettuce is more durable than it looks, and won’t wilt as soon as it comes into contact with dressing. Which is comforting, really, as some salad greens are so fragile that you have to treat them like fine silk instead of food.

Butter lettuces can withstand some wear and tear, especially if you buy them in hydroponic form -- grown, that is, in nutrient-rich solutions instead of actual soil.

At Biggs in Long Beach, chef Seth Greenburg uses hydroponic butter lettuce in a salad with watercress, Point Reyes blue cheese, thin slices of silky ripe pear, smoked almonds and a rich vinaigrette made with roasted cipolline onions.

Greenburg loves the way butter lettuce eats.

“It’s got a terrific mouth-feel,” he says, with leaves that are crunchy at the center and velvety at the ends, with great grooves in the leaves that allow the lettuce to hold its own with other ingredients. “It’s not fussy or intimidating.”

Whether hydroponic lettuce tastes any different depends on whom you talk to: Growers and sellers tend to split according to the product they have. Greenburg says he did a side-by-side taste test of farmers market lettuce versus hydroponic.

He found that the difference in flavor was actually quite small, but that the hydroponic lettuce stayed pristine so much longer that the choice was a clear one.

Hydroponic or fresh from the farmers market, butter lettuce is a perennial classic. As much as it can be a canvas for the chef’s imagination, it actually requires very little to be table-worthy -- a splash of good olive oil, a drop of vinegar, a few grains of salt. There’s a beautiful serenity in that.

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Butter lettuce salad with cipolline vinaigrette

Total time: 1 hour (includes onion roasting time)

Servings: 4

Note: From chef Seth Greenburg of Biggs restaurant in Long Beach. The restaurant uses hydroponic butter lettuce and watercress. You may substitute additional sherry vinegar for the aged sherry vinegar.

Cipolline vinaigrette

2 to 3 peeled cipolline onions

1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus a pinch, divided

1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided

1/4 cup sherry vinegar

1 tablespoon aged (25 to 50 years) sherry vinegar

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1. Peel the cipollini and place them on a baking sheet with a pinch of salt and a teaspoon olive oil. Roast in a 400-degree oven, turning

occasionally for even browning, until brown and soft, about 45 minutes.

2. Place the onions with the remaining ingredients into a blender or food processor (or into a deep bowl, if using an immersion blender). Blend until smooth. Taste and adjust the seasoning if necessary. Makes three-fourths cup.

Salad

1 head butter lettuce

1 bunch watercress

3 tablespoons crumbled Point Reyes (or Maytag) blue cheese

3 tablespoons coarsely chopped spicy smoked

almonds

1 red pear, sliced thin

1/2 cup cipollini vinaigrette

Pinch fleur de sel

Pinch freshly ground black pepper

1. Trim and discard the roots of the lettuce and watercress. Separate the lettuce into leaves. Stem the cress. Wash both with cold water and spin dry.

2. Place the lettuce and watercress in a bowl. Add the almonds, pear, one-third cup vinaigrette, the fleur de sel and pepper. Toss gently.

3. To serve, divide the salad among four plates or bowls.

Each serving: 274 calories; 4 grams protein; 13 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams fiber; 24 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 5 mg. cholesterol; 319 mg. sodium.

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Red butter lettuce salad

Total time: 30 minutes

Servings: 4

Note: From chef Amy Sweeney at Ammo. You may substitute regular butter lettuce. Sweeney uses Cowgirl Creamery feta.

Citrus vinaigrette

1/2 medium shallot, finely diced

1/2 teaspoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

1 tablespoon blood orange juice

1/4 cup best-quality olive oil

Salt, pepper

In a small bowl, mix together the shallot, lemon juice, orange juice and olive oil. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Salad

2 heads butter lettuce

2 blood oranges

2 golden beets

1/2 cup roasted, shelled pistachios

20 fresh mint leaves, washed and dried

4 ounces top-quality feta cheese, crumbled into 1/8 -inch pieces

1. Discard the outer leaves of the lettuce. Wash with cold water and spin dry.

2. Peel the blood oranges. Using a paring knife, cut away the skin and any pith. Working over a wide bowl, cut segments out of the orange, slicing as close to the membranes as possible. Save some of the juice for the dressing. Set the orange pieces aside.

3. Scrub the beets and trim the stems. Cook them in boiling water for about 15 minutes, or until crisp-tender. Do not overcook. Cool, then peel and cut into quarter-inch wedges. Drizzle with a splash of the vinaigrette and set aside.

4. In a bowl, toss the butter lettuce with the vinaigrette, then divide among four plates. Add one-fourth of the beets and oranges to each place. Sprinkle each with pistachios and mint. Top each salad with one-fourth of the feta. Serve immediately.

Each serving: 348 calories; 10 grams protein; 20 grams carbohydrates; 5 grams fiber; 27 grams fat; 7 grams saturated fat; 25 mg. cholesterol; 390 mg. sodium.

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Butter lettuce salad with melted tomatoes and bacon-shallot vinaigrette

Total time: 45 minutes

Servings: 4

Note: From chef Ben Ford of Ford’s Filling Station in Culver City. To shave the eggs, divide hard-boiled eggs into whites and yolks, then use a grater to finely grate them. Set aside individually.

Shallot confit

6 shallots, peeled and diced

1/2 cup olive oil

1/2 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Place the shallots, olive oil, thyme and salt in a small, heavy saucepan. Cook over low heat until the shallots are golden and caramelized, about 20 minutes. Remove from the heat and reserve.

Bacon-shallot vinaigrette

4 slices bacon

1/2 cup shallot confit

4 tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 cup sherry vinegar

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 cup extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon sugar

1. In a large saute pan, cook the bacon over low heat until crisp; drain on paper towels.

2. Crumble the bacon into a large, metal bowl. Add the shallot confit, mustard, vinegar, garlic, olive oil and sugar and whisk to combine.

Melted tomatoes

4 Roma tomatoes, cut in half lengthwise

1/4 cup olive oil

2 crushed garlic cloves

2 sprigs fresh thyme

1. Heat the oven to 450 degrees. In a medium bowl, gently mix the tomato halves, olive oil, garlic and thyme to coat the tomatoes.

2. Place the coated tomato halves face down on a baking sheet. Cook until the skin is blistered, about 15 minutes.

3. Cool, peel and reserve.

Salad and assembly

2 heads butter lettuce, trimmed and separated into leaves

1 recipe bacon-shallot vinaigrette, divided

1 recipe melted tomatoes

2 eggs, hard-boiled and shaved, whites and yolk separately

1. Wash and dry the lettuce. In a large bowl, toss the leaves with a small amount of the vinaigrette. Reserve the rest.

2. Divide the dressed lettuce among 4 plates. Arrange equal portions of melted tomatoes over each salad. Crumble the shaved egg over each. Drizzle the remaining vinaigrette around the edges of the plates. Serve immediately.

Each serving with 1 tablespoon dressing: 370 calories; 5 grams protein; 6 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram fiber; 37 grams fat; 6 grams saturated fat; 108 mg. cholesterol; 179 mg. sodium.