Ingredients
Serves two:
- firm-cooking potatoes as needed
- 40 g butter
- 4 eggs
- 75 g lamb’s lettuce
- 1 large cooked beetroot
- 2 coarsely chopped spring onions
- 1 tablespoon vinegar
- salt
This dish dates back to a time when leafy vegetables were hardly for sale throughout the entire winter. Apparently, people longed for them so intensely that they really looked forward to the pale, soft dandelion leaves growing beneath molehills, and to thinnings, young lettuce plants, or as Martine Wittop Koning poetically describes in her cookbook Het Vegetarisch Middagmaal (The Vegetarian Lunch, 1937): ‘Gather for this the leaves of mole lettuce (dandelion runners), goosefoot, sorrel (wild sorrel is also excellent for this purpose), nettle, spinach, garden cress, purslane, and the like, freshly sprouted in the spring…’ But since that will not be simple for everyone, I suggest lamb’s lettuce. In the Netherlands a very traditional combination with beetroot.
- Scrub the potatoes thoroughly and cut them into thick slices. Melt two tablespoons of butter in a wide frying pan. Cover and fry over medium heat until cooked and browned, stirring occasionally. Finally, add some salt.
- Boil the eggs for 10 minutes in plenty of water, then cool them under cold running water. Peel and keep warm with the potatoes.
- Wash and spin dry the lamb’s lettuce. Place on a large platter. Sprinkle with cubes of peeled beetroot and spring onions.
- Just before serving, halve the eggs and place them in the salad. Melt the remaining butter with vinegar and salt. Place in a small bowl on the table so that everyone can drizzle some over the salad. Serve the fried potatoes separately, along with a bottle of vinegar and a salt shaker.
Wine: Beaujolais or Pinot Noir.
Menu suggestion:
- Starter: Celeriac soup. Bring half a liter of water to a boil with a crumbled vegetable stock cube. Cook small cubes of peeled celeriac in it until very tender. Puree with a stick blender. On the table, a small bowl of crème fraîche and a small bowl of finely chopped parsley as a garnish.
- For dessert: Cinnamon custard. Soak two sheets of gelatin (about 4 g) in plenty of cold water; take 50 ml of 250 ml vanilla custard and heat it to the boiling point in a saucepan with half a dessert spoon of ground cinnamon. Remove from the heat and dissolve the squeezed gelatin in it. Stir in the rest of the custard. Let it get a a thick, sticky consistency (such as yoghurt) in the refrigerator; whip 100 ml of whipping cream until stiff with sugar. Fold into the thickened custard, leaving two dollops of cream. Transfer to dessert glasses. Let it set further in the refrigerator. Serve with dollops whipped cream on top, sprinkled with a touch of cinnamon.
