The Andiamo salad, with its blend of provolone cheese, roasted red peppers and Gaeta olives over mixed lettuces, needed a lighter hand with the dressing.

The salads here are also inventive but they work, from plain mixed lettuces dressed with sherry vinegar to green beans tossed with walnuts and Romano cheese.

While a plate of mixed lettuce with dressing is a dish the ancient temptress might have enjoyed, an Elizabethan salad was any vegetable dish, often a cooked one.

Mixed Greens 4 ounces mixed green and red lettuce 1 teaspoon olive oil 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce.

Providing mixed lettuce leaves for the food service and retail industries ought to be a rapid-growth sector, owing to the switch to healthier eating.

For the salad, place the mixed lettuce leaves into a bowl, drizzle over the oil and lemon juice and season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground black pepper.

The Old Parliament salad - piled high with mixed lettuce, steamed vegetables, pine nuts and raisins in a sweet mustard vinaigrette - is $14.40.

To round out the meal, serve a salad of mixed lettuces with an oil and vinegar dressing.

An appealing starter is grilled asparagus with mixed lettuces.

They are joined by rock shrimp, clams, mussels and scallops and spooned over mixed lettuces.