By Victoria Cosford
At the Gourmet Salad Hut, at the Mullumbimby Farmers Market, customers come and go, picking up a bag of mixed leaves or a jar of pesto, but it’s nothing like the summer crowd. Unsurprisingly, really – most people regard leafy greens and lettuces in particular as salad items more suitable to summer. I’m chatting to Liv Thomas who’s working for Gourmet Salad Hut, and she’s telling me that they are ‘exactly 50% smaller in winter.’ In summertime, she continues, ‘we go home with very little.’
And yet look at those beautiful big bunches of dill, mint and parsley! Those gorgeous wreaths of lettuces, rocket and kale and mizuna and watercress: all super-charged with precisely the vitamins we all need most in winter. Everything on the family-owned-and-operated Burringbar property, apart from the woody herbs and the kaffir limes, is grown hydroponically which, Liv tells me, is a gentler way to grow greens.
The plants start in small seed pods and move to tables above ground where the irrigation system releases water every couple of hours. ‘The benefit,’ Liv says, ‘is that everything is lush, grows quickly, and is easy to control.’
They’re lush all right, and yet there are three items whose lack of popularity perplexes Liv. One is mizuna. ‘A lot of people don’t know what to do with it’, she says. ‘It’s got a mustard flavour and is used in Japanese cuisine.’ Another is beetroot leaves; Liv indicates the neat little bunches of pretty crimson fronds. ‘We only ever bring one bag of them, and it never sells! People eat only the root – but the leaves are lovely in salads,’ she says. Finally, there is her favourite, sorrel. ‘Sorrel – bright, citrusy, light – is the secret gem of our stall that nobody buys. I’m a big fan: try something different!’
Gourmet Salad Hut is at Mullumbimby Farmers Market every Friday, 7–11am
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
