Here's one more salad suggestion forpeople who just can't with salad anymore: cook it. I did this with a container of arugula I bought recently, which started to turn yellow around the edges a little more quickly than I'd have preferred. So instead of tossing it—or, like, eating the whole thing in one sitting before it went bad—I sautéed it.
Why not? We're exiting light-salad season, veering headlong toward sautéed-greens season. And arugula—in my mind, at least—exists in the borderlands between wispy salad greens and leaves that are somewhat more multi-purpose, like spinach. Andlike spinach, the sautéed arugula turned into a lovely side dish, which absorbed the the other flavors it had been exposed to—olive oil, thinly sliced garlic, red pepper flakes—while retaining a bit of its own spice. Also like spinach, it cooked down a lot. Though it became wilted and tender almost immediately, I kept it on the heat for a couple of minutes to cook off some of the water released by the greens.
Which I suppose is what took this arugula beyond "wilted"—a popular preparation!—to "sautéed," which may seem a bridge too far for salad. But the cooking of salad greens isn't really an outré concept—check out this recipe forstir-fried garlic lettuce, for instance. And we're alreadyfans of lettuce soup: an easy way to use up any greens that happen to be lingering in the fridge, and especially the ribs and outer leaves that some cooks might be tempted to toss.
Or for aslightlyfancier version (in other words: it involves crème fraîche), this wilted greens soup can also be made with whatever you've got in the crisper drawer:
In short: if it seems like you're about to have to toss that arugula, try tossing it in the direction of a sauté pan—or a soup pot—before tossing it into the compost.
