Galangal. The rhizome of a plant of the ginger family, although it is smaller and more shrivelled. It has more translucent, flesh-coloured skin than the rhizome of ginger. It is peeled and grated or thinly sliced and used in the same way that fresh ginger is used, but has a slightly more complex flavour reminiscent of camphor. Greater galangal resembles a cross between ginger and pepper; lesser galangal is more pungent, with cardamom and eucalyptus flavours, whilst kempferia is the strongest.
A type of comber fish. Painted comber or lettered perch, more common in the Mediterranean than in the Atlantic. A bony fish with very good flavour, useful for soups or cooked whole. The skin looks almost as if it has been written on.
Lettuce is a general heading, like cabbage, and simply refers to many types of greens used in salads. In many languages the same word is used for lettuce as is used for green salad, lettuce representing many green salad leaves, though it should really be confined to those that leak a milky substance when the lettuce is cut. These would include Cos or Romaine lettuce as well as the butterheads. By as early as 500 BC, lettuce with no formed heads, as grew then, was already popular on the tables of Romans, where it was thought to aid digestion.
Lettuce hearts are the crunchy, usually paler, heart of the lettuce when the outer leaves are taken away.
