The bitter with the sweet: cooking radicchio

Whether or not summer is over is debatable, of course, and the debate shall rage on. This is a separate question from whether or not autumn has started. And if we conclude that summer has ended, but we're not ready to say that autumn has begun, well, then what do we call the "interspace" between when one ends and the other begins? After all, the calendar of seasons says fall follows summer.
It's a challenge, isn't it? There is this time, every year, when the variety of things you have available to cook with reaches its peak. Very few things are "gone." Yes, there hasn't been an apricot for a few weeks. Asparagus have been gone for months. So have green peas, although there is a promise of some more soon. Yet, looking at fruit: there are berries, peaches, nectarines, strawberries - all summer choices - and grapes, apples, pears - all fall choices. In the vegetables, there are corn, tomatoes, green beans - SUMMER - and leeks, celery root, the first jerusalme artichokes, big collards - AUTUMN. It almost seems to me that we need a fifth season, something called "harvest" or "invernal" or something like that, because rather than transition, we have a cornucopia of things to choose. And for the next six weeks or so, it is difficult to not overload your shopping bag. Enjoy it now, because after those six weeks or so, it IS indeed fall. The peaches will be mealy. You won't find a good, sweet plum. The tomatoes will diminish. And the color of what you buy will be shifting to dark green, dark brown, dark tan.... and dark maroon.

And it is a maroon vegetable I turn to today: the chickory "radicchio." You know it. It's a vegetable that can fairly be called deceitful. When you look at it for the first time, it almost looks like the "bacon" of vegetables, at least to me. Long strips of white, with dark red strips around it. Doesn't that remind you of bacon? And seeing those strong colors, I remember my first reaction was that it was going to be sweet.

Uh, NO. One could never call radicchio sweet. It characterizes what you will find about many of the winter leafy vegetables. They are strong. They lean toward the bitter. Kale, chard (to some degree), collards, and so forth will all give you a s tronger flavor than the veggies you enjoyed so much in the summer. A little of them will go a long way, unless, of course, you know how to tame them.

And I think that many of them, if I may anthorpomorphize for a minute, wish to be tamed - sort of like the fox in "The Little Prince." (if you can get through it without crying, and even if you can't, go and read it again. It will make you feel good all over again, I promise. And this is a time to start feeling good all over again. ). If you use radicchio raw, in a salad, you will want to use very little of it, because it will overwhelm everything else. IF, however, you cook it, what you will find is that the leaves are actually very rich, full flavored, and become rather sweet. I still remember the first time I grilled radicchio. It was a Labor Day weekend. I had two large heads of it. I quartered them, rubbed them with olive oil, put them under the broiler for about three minutes, turned them over, and did another three, and served them forth. The amount of water they produced was phenomenol, and that water seems to have carried many of the bitter juices away. Indeed, that seems to happen: if you can get liquid out of a bitter vegetable, you will get the bitterness away.

Would that that were true for people!

Ok, enough psychoanalysis, let's cook. When you are cooking with a product, like a vegetable, that is inherently bitter, the key thing to do is to pair it with something that contradicts the bitterness, i.e, something a bit sweet. Cooking radicchio will cut back the bitterness, but it will never eliminate it. So you should combine it with something "transiently " sweet. In the proteins, I associate this type of subtle sweetness with pork, and chicken. Both go well with radicchio, and this weekend, I combined it with chicken. I want to suggest this to you. The proportions here make two, very good sized portions. You will of course want to increase the proportions, if you have more people to serve.

Start with one medium head of radicchio, and shred it. This is best done by simply slicing across the head, so that you have a big pile of bright red shards. You will also need one half of a large chicken breast. Remember that chicken breasts come in halves. So if you have a whole breast, cut it in half, or cook the whole thing and save the rest for something else.

Slice the chicken breast into strips. Now, we can get cooking. This is really easy. Put some olive oil in a pan and when it's hot, add the cut chicken. You may want to salt the chicken before hand. Resist the temptation to move the chicken around, for at least 4 minutes. You want to create a sear. Then and only then, turn it, and cook it for maybe a minute. You do it quickly hear, because you don't want to dry it out. Toss in the radicchio. It will reduce almost immediately and you'll have a pile of soft, dark red greens with a taste that is unlike any other vegetable. And... you're done. Unless you want to play with this. You can push this to a sweeter side,by doing something like adding grapes to it (thinking of fall), or sliced peaches (thinking of summer). You could also add some spicy peppers and push it in another direction. You can do a lot of things. For example, we had left over barley from a meal last week, and I just tossed that in at the end and we had a complete meal. TOO complete a meal for our subsequent gym visit, but "now we know."

If you haven't met the acquaintance of cooked radicchio, give it a try. I think you will almost certainly want to use it at least a few more times.