Radicchio

When I was growing up, apples seemed so bland and boring—I could never get excited about a mushy Red Delicious the way I could a summer peach. But today, thanks to small farmers around the country like Barbara and Bill Spencer of Windrose Farms, we have a lot more choices where apples are concerned, and a lot more to get excited about. Determined to revive the disappearing heirlooms, the Spencers painstakingly planted more than forty varieties of apple trees on their farm in Paso Robles, California. It took 6 years for the trees to produce, and that glorious fall, when Barbara turned up at the back door of Lucques with boxes and boxes of their impressive crop, I was blown away. The apples looked dazzlingly beautiful and tasted even better. From russeted emerald greens to mottled pinks to deep burgundy-blacks, we sampled our way through them all, picking our favorites and taking note of which were better raw and which were better cooked. Some of our favorites for eating out of hand were Braeburn, Arkansas Black, and Gernes Red Acre. Crisp, sweet, and tart, these revelatory fruits were the inspiration for this fall salad. And if it’s not enough that they’re growing all these beautiful heirloom apples, Barbara and Bill also grow some of the best Asian pears I’ve ever tasted. Juicy and delicately perfumed, they’re a fun surprise, sliced and tossed with the apples, buttermilk, mint, and radicchio in this thirst-quenching salad.

Orzo is the Italian word for barley, and the slender, grain-shape of orzo pasta makes for a no-fuss, neatly consumed salad, particularly if you are balancing a plate while perched on the edge of a sofa or standing around the TV watching the Super Bowl. Although the salad makes for a great accompaniment to the Stuffed Sliders Your Way, your vegetarian friends will thank you for providing them with an option they will really enjoy as their main dish.

Chopped walnuts nicely complement the rich walnut oil in the dressing.

This crisp, colorful salad is a refreshing accompaniment to any meal, whether you serve it after, before, or with the main course. The slightly sweet nature of fennel pairs well with radicchio's mild bitterness. The lemony olive vinaigrette and herbs keep the salad vibrant.

For this salad, Brian likes to mix the moist, orange-fleshed sweet potatoes—such as Garnet or Jewel—with drier, yellow-fleshed varieties. Ask your produce merchant to point you to the right types if you aren’t sure. After roasting and cubing the sweet potatoes, Brian tosses them with a mix of bitter chicories, a nutty sherry vinaigrette, and fine shavings of sheep’s milk cheese—an inspired marriage of contrasting textures and flavors. Serve with pork chops or a pork roast for a winter dinner.

Treviso is a leafy vegetable found all over northern Italy, especially around Venice. It looks like a cross between romaine lettuce and radicchio, whose burgundy color and slightly bitter flavor it shares. I like to wilt treviso and then add it to pasta with some creamy goat cheese to mellow its bitterness.

Closely related in flavor and spirit to the classic French pissenlit (dandelion greens with bacon), this differs in that the greens are cooked from the start. Also, though it may be finished with lemon, vinegar is almost never used. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: any relatively tender, bitter green—curly endive, escarole, dandelion, even Belgian endive, cut crosswise.

This is an excellent side dish, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt, the base of an elegant salad—combine it with Gorgonzola and walnuts, for example—or a fine topping for Grilled Polenta (page 530) or Crostini (page 41). Other vegetables to prepare this way: split Belgian endives (use four), or even small heads of romaine lettuce.

Do not skimp on the olive oil here; its flavor is integral. Really, this is escarole braised in olive oil, an extremely useful and wide-ranging technique. You can omit the anchovies if you like or add pine nuts (about 1/4 cup), raisins (1/4 cup), pitted black or green olives (about 1/2 cup), or about 1/2 cup chopped tomato. You can also use wine or stock in place of the water, for a richer taste. Other vegetables you can prepare this way: this is a classic and basic recipe that can be used for almost any green or in fact for “harder” vegetables like cauliflower or broccoli, following exactly the same procedure. Cooking time will vary.

The harmony of this salad is that both the radicchio and the endive are from the chicory family, sweet and slightly bitter at the same time.

This quick salad delivers a lot of flavor. The radicchio has a touch of bitterness, but the raisins bring in the sweet element, and the goat cheese the creamy complexity. It is a great appetizer, or can be a main course.

Radicchio belongs to the chicory family. Sweet and bitter at the same time, it is delicious in salads, braised alone, in risotto, and for making pasta sauces. On my recent trip to the Salinas Valley in California, I was astounded to see how radicchio prospered, and how much of it was being produced.

Radicchio trevisano will yield the best risotto with the most authentic Italian flavor, but this recipe will be very good with radicchio grown in the United States, either the small round heads, or heads with long wide leaves. Endive, a distant cousin of the radicchio, will also make a good risotto.

Although it is great in a salad—sweet and bitter at the same time—in the cold winter months radicchio trevisano is better cooked, and has a more resilient texture. Traditionally paired with speck—boneless, smoked prosciutto—radicchio makes a great risotto (see page 115) and a great sauce for pasta. In those dishes, the radicchio serves a secondary role as a distinctive flavoring, but when baked this way, it is the main protagonist. I enjoy baked radicchio by the mouthful, savoring its taste and texture, sweet, bitter, and crunchy. The best variety for baking is the long thin radicchio trevisano or spadone (as shown in the photos), but the small round heads most often found in the supermarket or the kind with long but wide leaves (resembling purple romaine lettuce) are also delicious baked this way. Serve as an antipasto or a vegetable course, over soft or baked polenta.

Uni, or sea urchin roe, is at once delicate and incredibly rich. I like this preparation because the chive and radish offer a bit of bite and cut some of that richness, while the lemon and cucumber contribute a breezy freshness. Because the portions are small, make sure you cut the vegetables into a very fine, uniform dice. This would make a very elegant passed appetizer at a cocktail party. You can find fresh uni packaged in trays at Asian markets.

When I asked friends for their favorite pizza-combination ideas, this one, from former Boston Globe Living Arts editor Fiona Lewis, jumped to the front of the line. First, I’m a freak for figs: fresh when they’re in season, of course, but dried at other times of the year. Second, when Fiona mentioned it, I had just started yielding to an addiction to Taleggio, the pungent, slightly bitter Italian cheese that tastes of mushrooms. I immediately thought walnuts would be a perfect crunchy addition to this party, and I invited along my old friend radicchio to add even more bitterness. Once I got the layering order right (walnuts need to go on the bottom, under the nest of radicchio, to avoid burning under the broiler), this was a keeper. Obviously, if you want to make this when fresh figs are in season, by all means do so; skip the soaking-in-wine step and you’ll be good to go.