Lettuce on the barbecue? It may not sound very appetising, but the results may actually surprise you. In particular, lettuces with thick segments are truly excellent when seared briefly at high temperatures and then cooked until soft just like a vegetable. In this video, we show you how to make a delicious summer salad with ingredients that benefit massively from barbecue flavours and intense heat. This means you can cook both the meat for your main course and the salad starter on the barbecue at the same time.
The two stars of our video are a romaine lettuce and a cantaloupe melon. The latter also develops a more complex spectrum of flavours on the barbecue as its texture changes and adopts a denser, fleshier consistency. Furthermore, the high sugar content ensures a subtly caramelised surface. We garnished the salad and melon with a fresh mint pesto, pine nuts and feta. Served in this way, barbecued lettuce can actually steal the show from most meat dishes.