Raw radicchio goes beautifully with sweet, salty and creamy flavours. Cut the heads into quarters lengthways, cut out the core, then slice into ribbons. The cut edges will go brown fairly quickly, so make the salad just before you serve. Dress it first, in a sweet–sour vinaigrette made with sherry or balsamic vinegar . Then add in sweet seasonal fruits such as ripe pears or persimmons and a salty cheese such as Roquefort or Stilton (for our recipe). Toasted nuts also work well.
Other Bitter Leaves
Sharp, bitter winter leaves are a lovely way to pep up cold-weather cooking. Whether you eat them cooked or raw, all these leaves share the characteristic bitterness of radicchio (derived from their wild dandelion-like ancestors), and can often be used interchangeably with it in recipes:
BELGIAN ENDIVE (sometimes called chicory or just endive) are pale green, tightly wrapped buds or ‘chicons’ that are commonly grown in northern Europe. They are traditionally served wrapped in ham and smothered in béchamel sauce, or eaten in a mixed salad with boiled egg. Green chicory is first grown in the field to produce roots; these are then harvested in the autumn and transferred to forcing sheds for the winter. They are kept in the dark and ‘forced’ to produce their shoots without light, just as rhubarb is forced in the Yorkshire triangle. The heads go green and become more bitter if you store them in the light.
CURLY ENDIVE (sometimes called frisée) has frilly, deeply indented green leaves with a pale heart. Huge amounts of this are eaten in France, where they enhance the natural tendency towards a pale centre by putting caps on the plants for a few days before harvest. It’s less bitter than radicchio and is good raw in salads.
PAIN DE SUCRE is a solid chicory with tightly wrapped leaves. This is the hardiest of the family and can stand in the field through to February. The pale hearts have a mild flavour and crunchy texture similar to Belgian endive, graduating to greener, more bitter outer leaves which are better suited to cooking.
