Lettuce salad recipe
with oranges

Lettuce salad recipe with oranges

We meet the lettuce salad recipe with oranges in a few Mediterranean regions. Lettuce, oranges, oil and salt, and in no time you have a splendid light salad. To be sure, the simplicity of the Majorcan orange salad recipe wants the best ingredients.

The oranges of the fertile valley of Sóller, in the northwest of Majorca, are exquisite. I used oranges solleriques to illustrate this Mediterranean recipe, but of course, any natural orange variety is fine.

This lettuce salad recipe admits romaine lettuce, green leaf lettuce, or even escarole according to your preferences or month of the year. There is always a lettuce variety at its peak, and the natural orange season is very long. So, you can enjoy this joyful Mediterranean salad many months every year!

Ingredients for this lettuce salad recipe

Serves 4 as appetizer; 5 or 6 servings as side dish.

• 1 head of romaine lettuce – use only tender or heart leaves.
• 3 oranges – peeled and cut into slices.
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Salt

Orange slices prepared for the lettuce and orange salad.

How to prepare this orange salad recipe

1. Separate the lettuce leaves. Select the most tender or heart leaves, and wash them with cold water. Don't soak the lettuce leaves for too long because they lose nutrients. Leave them in a colander for some moments, but if they still have too much water, pat them dry them with a clean kitchen towel.


2. Tear the lettuce leaves with your hands, or cut them with a knife into 2-inch pieces give or take. It is said that using your hands preserves the natural lettuce taste better.


3. Peel the oranges and cut them in slices of no more than half an inch thick.


4. Take an oval or round serving dish and distribute the lettuce. Sprinkle salt and distribute the orange slices as a second layer. Dress it with a thin stream of extra virgin olive oil and serve. An olive oil dispenser works best.


5. This refreshing lettuce salad recipe is great to accompany meat dishes.

Orange salad recipe Refreshing Mediterranean food salad

Mediterranean manners at the table

If your social conventions allow it to you, do wipe up the oil and juices that remain in your plate with hand-torn pieces of bread, preferably country-style bread.

It is the last delightful morsel of this trempó de taronja, orange salad, as it is also known in the Catalan of Majorca. Nobody would consider it rude; on the contrary, it's a sensible thing to do.

I'd like to close this lettuce salad recipe with oranges with an evocative quote by French writer Alphonse Daudet. He wrote a poetical short story on oranges. Here's a short quote in English.

To know oranges well you have to see them in their natural environment, in the Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Corsica, and Algeria, in the blue golden air, the mild atmosphere of the Mediterranean.

I remember a small orange orchard, just outside Blidah; how beautiful were they! In the dark foliage, lustrous, glazed, the fruits had the glare of colored glasses, and gilded the surrounding air with the aureole of splendor that surrounds shining flowers.