KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

Leafy salads and tangy dressings explode with taste and colour

Pick your side: salad or cake. We have recipes for both the virtuous and the sinful cook.

We think of summer as prime time for produce, but winter has bright seasonal salads, too. A cold-weather salad bowl may hold a lively mixture of sturdy-leafed, multicoloured greens in the chicory family, instead of lettuce, along with a riot of citrus fruits. It is bit odd to term them “greens”, since many chicories’ leaves are a deep red, ranging from burgundy to crimson. This is especially true of the slightly-but-pleasantly bitter Italian varieties of red chicory known as radicchio.

The round-headed red radicchio di Chioggia, which looks something like a small red cabbage decorated with distinct white veins, is the most common. Some like to chop it or even shred it like slaw, but I usually prefer to tear the leaves in to fairly large pieces for a salad.

Other radicchio varieties, like the ruddy, elongated Treviso, which I cut into 2cm-wide ribbons, and the scarlet curlyfingered Tardivo (I lop off the fingers and leave them whole) are likely to be available at farmers’ markets in the coming months. Some produce markets receive weekly deliveries of these characteristically Italian salad greens.

As a counterpoint to radicchio’s mildly bitter edge, it is common to pair it with an assertive savoury vinaigrette, which might contain garlic, mustard or anchovy. This is a lovely route to take, nearly begging for chopped hard-cooked egg and canned tuna.

But for a spectacular pairing of flavours, I suggest a sweet connection between radicchio and citrus.

Citrus is at its peak now, so destiny prevails. My favourite combination for this salad is blood oranges, navel oranges, ruby grapefruit and kumquats, but you can pick and choose.

A small serrated paring knife will help to remove the peel and pith of the fruits easily. Then simply slice them and arrange them among the red leaves in all their colourful glory.

All that remains is to whisk up a little dressing with some chopped shallot and grapefruit juice. Use olive oil or walnut oil, and add some toasted walnuts. The sweet-sour-bitternutty combination is extremely seductive.

Chicories come in other shapes and colours. Green escarole is a member of the family, as is frisee, curly endive.

The Belgian endive is a pale ivory, and its leaves are tightly packed into pointed, torpedo-like heads. Endives (there are also red-hued and frilly fringed yellow versions) are great for salads. Some find them a bit less bitter than radicchio.

I don’t find raw endive bitter at all; the leaves to me are crisp, juicy and refreshing.

Cooking turns eating them into an altogether different experience, with a complex flavour that reminds me of artichokes. In Belgium and France, roasted or gratineed endive is a common side dish.