02/02/2004
The bitter salads of winter (Les salades amères d'hiver)
Bitter salads? you're exclaiming to yourself. You may even be thinking I'm going to write about what to do if your salads turn bitter. But, nope! I'm going to tell you how to appreciate--and grow--the exquisite bitter salad plants of winter.
In the cooking of Europe, Asia, and even Africa, lightly bitter notes are not automatically eschewed. Rather, bitterness is recognized as what it is: one of the basic taste sensations (along with sweet, salty, and sour--remember your grade school tongue diagram?), and thus a necessary complement to other flavors. Bitter tastes are known to stimulate the biliary tract and enhance digestion. That's why so many European aperitifs are slightly bitter.
While years ago, bitter flavors made me wrinkle my nose in distaste and refuse a second bite, now I find that a subtle touch of bitterness--particularly in a dish presenting contrasting flavors--is not only salutatory but downright delicious!
I can't think of a better example of this than the rich repertoire of slightly bitter greens that persist and even thrive through the winter. Endives, escaroles, chicories, radicchios...all of these closely related salad plants are plentiful in markets through the winter, and they should be in your garden as well.
I have a theory about why this family of salads is so resistant to cold. Have you ever bitten into a wild lettuce plant, or its close relative, the dandelion? Bitter, right? I think that bitterness is the primordial state of the tribe of salad plants, before man started trifling with their genes to make them sweeter. My theory is that those salad plants that retain a trace of bitterness are closer to the wild ideal--and therefore, hardier. And please notice, the 'Variegata de Lusia' head at the bottom of the photo actually has snow on it!
Some of the cold-hardiest of these winter salads is the widely varied band of Italian chicories. No one appreciates this tangy vegetable more than the Italians (not even the French, it's true), and they have kept scores of different varieties going over the millenia. Among the charms of many of these is that cold weather not only causes these chicories to form heads, but brings out various shades of crimson in their coloration.
The best known of these Italian chicories is the radicchio of Chioggia, which forms the tight baseball-sized, dark red heads available in most groceries. While it is certainly a noteworthy variety, it is not the most delicious, the prettiest, nor the easiest to grow, often resisting forming the heads you expect.
Two extraordinarily beautiful, delicious, and easy to grow varieties to look for are 'Variegata di Chioggia', with larger deep red heads heavily marbled with a fine veil of creamy white; and 'Variegata di Lusia', with large heads of palest creamy green beautifully flecked with pale carmine. Both of these varieties are succulent, thick-leaved without being tough, and actually have very minimal bitterness. Both form large, tight heads with great ease in cool to cold weather, without cutting back or forcing.
Just plant the seed of these Italian chicories in late July to early August, shading it if necessary to cool the soil sufficiently to allow germination. (If you live in Zone 5 or northward, you may want to plant in early July to let your plants mature before severe cold hits.) All you need to do after that is thin the plants to six inches apart and keep them weeded and moderately watered during dry spells. Forget about them until cold weather hits, when you can begin to harvest your winter treasures. Your dinner guests will never have eaten such beautiful leaves, I promise you.
Extravagantly beautiful but trickier to grow is the red radicchio of Treviso ('Rouge de Trevise', in French). This chicory will form upright heads of thick ribbed, deep ruby red leaves that are long and inward-curved. The heads are a bit reminiscent of those of Belgian endive, but are more open and curious-looking. This chicory requires a very long season and a relatively mild winter to form its spectacular heads outdoors. Mild winter gardeners can plant it in August for harvest in January through March.
Gardeners in Zones 6b (maybe even 7a) northward will want to plant this chicory in late spring to early summer. They will then need to cut dig the taproots in November, cut off the foliage just above the crown, plunge the roots in moist sand or a basin of water with their crowns just above the surface. Place this forcing contraption in an unheated garage or basement (no light required) and in 3 to 4 weeks, you'll have exotic heads of Treviso to munch on, although they may be paler red from their cave-dwelling existence than if they had matured in the garden.
This same technique, incidentally, renders the humble dandelion into a head of silky, succulent, pale yellow leaves (photo right) redolent of dandelion blossom that are considered a great delicacy in France. In fact, if you ever drive around rural France, you'll notice that dandelions are quite rare, as compared to in the U.S., this in spite of the fact that the dandelion is native in France. Why? Well, they've all been eaten! The French adore dandelion salads both blanched (as above) and green.
If you're intrigued with the dandelion idea but find the idea of digging up the roots and forcing them in your basement too much work, try this. Locate some dandelions on your property. Right now (early February), cover the dandelion in situ, as it were, with a a shovel of compost or leaf mold. Cover this mini-pile with a gallon plastic milk jug with the bottom cut out of it. I'll leave it up to you to figure out how to anchor these things in the ground against the wind. (If you're talented with a glass cutter, you can cut the bottoms out of gallon glass jugs and have the real thing.) Alternatively, if you happen to have glass cloches lying around, by all means, use those. Depending on how much sunny weather you have, you should have blanched dandelion heads in two to four weeks.
For the faint-hearted or downright lazy, just depend on your best local market to supply you with these delicious bitter winter greens. You can always settle for endive or escarole if you can't find anything else. But pester your greengrocer for a wider array of these deliciously bitter greens.
When it comes to composing salads with your bitter treasures, keep a few things in mind. One, if you and your family are unused to their tang, break yourselves in gradually by mixing a couple of handfuls in with your usual milder salad greens. Second, as graduate to appreciating the pure, unadulterated bitter green, pair its tang with counterpoints of sweetness, in the form of fruits both fresh and dried, and rich unctuousness, in the form of cheeses, smoked meats, and nuts. You'll find that this threesome contrives an awesome synergy of flavors which will rapidly become irresistable. To see my recipe for the salad in the photo above, click here. Bitter, mmmmm! Bon appetit!
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Products of Interest:
Vallée Noire salad bowl
Escarole 'Casque d'Or'
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Cassole--vase-shaped
Tuscan poêlon
Tuscan tegame