Do you like your lettuce crisp or floppy? Frizzy or frilly? Red or green? These days, you can buy whatever you fancy and a salad dressing to match.

Lettuce are available all year round, but they're at their best from late November to March. You can buy whole lettuce or mesclun, a mixture of loose salad leaves. Tear up a few leaves and add a dash of dressing and you've got a simple side dish!

Storing lettuce
Everyone agrees - you should never wash lettuce before storing it in the fridge. It will just go slimy.

John Christopoulos, from Australian Fruit and Vegetable Marketing at Sydney's Flemington Markets, offers the following advice.

Hydroponic lettuce (which are sold with the roots attached): Put the roots in water and put the lettuce on a shelf in the fridge. It will stay crisp for up to a week.

Other lettuce: Remove the core and store in the crisper section of your fridge, in a loose plastic bag or a special lettuce crisper. It should last up to seven days.

Mesclun (loose salad leaves): These can be kept in a loose plastic bag, but the best way of storing them is loosely wrapped in a damp terry-towelling cloth or Chux in the crisper. Moisten the cloth every couple of days and they should last five to seven days.

Cos lettuce (Romaine lettuce)



Cos lettuce has crisp, long leaves that are tightly wrapped to form an elongated head. It is crisp, succulent and sweet, and an essential for making Caesar salad. Leave the small inside leaves whole to give your salad a more elegant look.

Iceberg lettuce



This is the lettuce we all grew up with. It has large, crisp leaves with a sweet, watery flavour. And its unusual name? One theory is it came about when lettuce were transported in ice boxes on North American railways. Iceberg lettuce is good shredded in salads. Whole leaves are used as 'wrappers' in Asian dishes such as san choy bau (a sweet, spicy mixture of pork and chicken mince served in a lettuce leaf) and Vietnamese lettuce-wrapped spring rolls.

Butter lettuce



A light green lettuce, with round soft leaves and a mild, buttery flavour that makes it a favourite with kids and people who "don't really like lettuce". The mignonette variety has brownish-red leaves.

Coral lettuce



This lettuce has tightly curled, crisp leaves. It has a mild, slightly bitter flavour that goes particularly well with seafood. There are red and green varieties.

Oak-leaf lettuce



Similar to coral lettuce, but its leaves are a pretty oak-leaf shape and its flavour is milder. Comes in red or green varieties.

Radicchio



This dark red 'lettuce' is really a chicory, and its leaves have a bitter taste. A little goes a long way, so chop it into salads for a bitter-sweet flavour. Radicchio can also be grilled or fried.

Rocket



Rocket is also not a real lettuce. Native to the Mediterranean, it grows like wildfire (which explains its jet-propelled name) and has a pleasant peppery flavour when young. Older leaves can be very hot. It's an essential in the mesclun mix and goes well with mild cheeses. Use it in salads or throw a handful in your risotto five minutes before serving.

Preparing lettuce
You have to wash lettuce before you eat it, but the trick is to dry the leaves before you use them in a salad. That way, the salad dressing sticks and you avoid getting a pool of water in the bottom of the bowl!

In her book, The Cook's Companion, Stephanie Alexander suggests washing the leaves then drying them in a salad spinner or with paper towels. The next step is to transfer them to a bag lined with kitchen paper and to pop them in the fridge for up to an hour. When you make up your salad, the leaves will be dry.