Charred lettuce, fennel, pancetta & orange salad

Why you should BBQ lettuce this summer and five ways to serve it.

You don’t need a sausage to BBQ

My Big Green Egg (which was a 40th Birthday pressie) sits next to the kitchen garden. Which is bad news for the vegetables. Because I will often be grilling away merrily when a pert, perfectly ready lettuce, say, catches my eye and, seconds later, finds itself uprooted and flung on the BBQ. It happens too with runner beans, spring onions, leeks, beetroot and courgettes later in the year, but for now, it’s the lettuces that are getting it.

Because lettuces are wonderful on the BBQ.

Ways with charred lettuce

A hearted lettuce, halved and pressed onto the grill of a hot but not furnace-like BBQ, will become caramelised and savoury on the outside in a couple of minutes, but remain milky and crunchy within. No need to oil it, that will only create smoke. It’s important the lettuce be hearted too, otherwise the wedges will not stay together. You can create a similar effect with a hot griddle pan if the BBQ is inconvenient.

And when you do char a lettuce, the salad below is good place to start. But you might also try:

• Dousing in a blue cheese sauce (recipe in my cookbook, From the Veg Patch)

• Burying in a mountain of shaved parmesan

• Stuffing hot into a crusty baguette with leftover roast chicken and mayonnaise

• Serve with my pea mash recipe and flatbreads for scooping

  

Charred lettuce, fennel, pancetta and orange salad

BBQs are not just for meat. This charred lettuce technique is wonderful on the barbecue and the salad it underpins makes a perfect accompaniment to a barbecued chicken, though I’d happily tuck in to it as a main. Prep everything else in advance then add the hot, just-charred lettuces just before serving.

Serves 4 as main, 6 for side

• 150g pancetta

• 2 oranges