![]() It arrived under a lavalike green ooze, a creamily high-caloric green goddess dressing lumpy with tender bits of avocado.Michael Jordan's The Steak House.the wedge wore a blue cheese dressing.John Schenk, the chef at Clementine, tuned in to this particular frequency years before tony restaurants began playing with iceberg." ![]() I went for the wedge the other day at Del Frisco Double Eagle Steak House. It survives, and so do the sludgelike dressings that drape it like heavy velvet curtains - the great, goopy family that includes blue cheese, green goddess, ranch and Thousand Island. The big, cold wedge is a cornerstone of American cuisine. Why iceberg? No one seems to know, although one popular theory holds that the name refers to the tons of ice that chilled it in the days before refrigerated rail cars. In 1948, the iceberg we know today was born. A lettuce that went by the name of iceberg was developed in the 1890's, and somehow the name resurfaced when new varieties of durable, easily shippable crisphead lettuce began emerging in California in the mid-1920's. "They are cut into wedge-shaped pieces, or into crosswise slices." The lettuce is a relative newcomer, and confusingly named. Little pieces? Most Americans side with the prim instructions given in the first "Joy of Cooking." "Heads of iceberg lettuce are not separated," the directions read. Flavor? Surely the iceberg stands supreme as the blandest of all greens. "Many people damn it," he once wrote, "but when broken up, not cut, it adds good flavor and a wonderfully crisp texture to a salad with other greens." It also keeps longer than other lettuces, he pointed out. Served cold, it's very nice on the palate, with a good crunch." Marc Meyer, at Five Points, anoints a wedge of the stuff with a modernized, Europeanized blue cheese dressing made with picon cheese from Spain, toasted almond slices and radishes.Despite its shortcomings, iceberg has always had its fans. And in some very unlikely places, it has earned a strange kind of cachet."It's one of those things that's synonymous with growing up in America," Mr. It still accounts for 70 percent of the lettuce raised in California, but that share is declining (in the mid-1970's it was as high as 80 percent), and anyone dining at fancier restaurants around the United States might wonder if it hadn't disappeared entirely, displaced by frisee, dandelion greens, oak leaf, lollo rosso, exotic cresses, microgreens, sprouts - anything, in short, that's green, has a leaf, and is not iceberg. ![]() The lettuce itself remains popular in the United States. Short of heating up a TV dinner, there are few more blatantly retro gestures than ordering a wedge of iceberg lettuce covered in a thick, creamy salad dressing. "MARKET WATCH 6/23: Iceberg Lettuce," Jeanne McManus, The Washington Post, June 23, 1999, Pg. Iceberg-a head lettuce, as opposed to a leaf lettuce-is also known as "crisphead" lettuce since one of its chief virtues (some say its only virtue) is that it stays fresher longer than leaf lettuces." The wedge of iceberg drowning in a thick dressing was replaced with vinaigrette-tossed leaf lettuces (especially romaine) and smaller, more exotic "designer" greens, all more nutritional and more flavorful than the "neutral" iceberg. Quartered, shredded, its leaves pulled off and transformed into cups for canned pears, it knew no rival until the 1970s when Caesar Chavez called for a boycott to protest the working conditions of California lettuce pickers. Iceberg Lettuce Boycotted? "There once was a time-before the arrival of mesclun, frisee, endive, spring mix, packaged salads, radicchio and arugula-when iceberg lettuce dominated the produce aisle. Before that people had to depend on what you could grow locally and preserve from the gardens. Year around and all the way as far as Maine, as the train pulled into each stop, folks would call out excitedly, "The icebergs are coming, the icebergs are coming!" The name would stick. Using ice they carefully covered the heads of lettuce and shipped them How Crisphead lettuce became known as Iceberg lettuceīruce Church founder of Fresh Express, was responsible for popularizing the idea of shipping lettuce across the US continent from Salinas, California to the spots on the East coast. ![]()
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