Radicchio Salad with Honey Mustard Dressing

Another day another salad. Just yesterday I was having a conversation with Andrea about different vegetables and their use in salads and iceberg lettuce came up. I compared iceberg lettuce to an extremely boring person who just sits at the table and doesn’t add anything to the conversation, and we had quite a laugh about this.

If we were to continue this comparison of vegetables with human characteristics I would say radicchio is quite a character and can be a little intense. This intensity while interesting and definitely not boring can make it a too much to handle on its own, but in a group of friends it works so much better. I think this is an accurate description of how to deal with radicchio in dishes.

Radicchio has a quite bitter taste and, in this recipe, it’s paired with a tangy honey mustard dressing, some fresh apples and salty crispy bacon. When they all come together the radicchio is much more palatable then when on its own.

Radicchio is another type of chicory and similar to endive it also has a unique harvesting method, which is why it has a higher price tag than other vegetables. Radicchio is sometimes also called Italian chicory, because it’s often used in Italian cooking. Radicchio has a few different varieties and their name is derived from the region they are grown in. The 2 most common varieties are Chioggia and Treviso. They are both relatively the same in taste with Treviso being slightly milder. The big difference between the two is in the shape. Chioggia is round and is quite often mistaken for red cabbage, Treviso on the other hand has a longer shape similar to a romaine lettuce.