HerbFarm Day 3, Baby Greens

At the Trellis restaurant, they have a two-hour garden salad; all the ingredients in the salad are harvested two hours before service begins, at the HerbFarm, the chefs clip the baby greens from the living plants just outside the kitchen doors.
It's lovely to be offered a pair of scissors to clip baby greens with. After planting trees on Thursday and Friday before I left, Bill handed me a pair of scissors and said I could cut some greens for a salad. I clipped some chervil, baby mustard greens called Ruby Streak, miners lettuce and mache. I'll bring a camera to the garden soon and show you what they look like in the soil.

Miners Lettuce, baby Ruby Streak Mustard Greens. The miners lettuce isn't as flavorful as the others, but it's fun to eat- it reminds me of the texture of watercress but not at all spicy. The red streak adds a gorgeous color to a salad and is both nutty, bittersweet and reminiscent of garden peas.

Here is Mache leaves next to Chervil. I love Chervil, it has a light licorice flavor that adds a hint of flavor like a little minty surprise. The mache is smooth and nutty. The chervil is really delicate and almost wilts under water, the mache is heartier and can really lift up a salad that looks flat. With greens this lovely, my salad was a mixture of all four lettuces, high quality extra virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice and sea salt, just lovely. You can find mache at larger grocery stores near the arugula and herbs. It's likely the other greens will not be in the herb section, check out your closest farmers market or plant store for the other greens. Or better yet- grow some!