Enjoy a taste of chicories
These dandelion relatives will add a delicious crunch to mealtimes. Helen Billiald explains how to grow them
These dandelion relatives will add delicious crunch to mealtimes
Chicories have a history of being misunderstood and ignored on our shores. If you want to see them really valued, look no further than Italy, where the cultivation of chicories is a matter of national pride. There you’ll find them blanched, baked, thrown on a griddle, pan-fried or used in a gratin, as well as slipped into the occasional salad. The first thing to get your head around is the wide range of chicories to choose from. There are flame red or speckled cultivars (radicchios) that grow first as green loose-leaf plants then gradually form a tight heart in autumn, milder, crunchy green sugarloaf chicories, or the dandelionlike leaves of the puntarelle. A browse through a good seed catalogue shows a count of almost 40 different cultivars.
Perfect timing
While all possess the bitter chicory tang, they can be used in lots of different ways. Sometimes chicories are grown fast and snipped young as salad leaves. Often, they’re grown on into the autumn to give solid hearts – perfect for braising or blackening on the griddle. Timing your harvest is critical. If you pick palla rossa radicchio in its early, bitter, loose-leaf green form, rather than waiting for autumn’s falling light and temperatures to redden its tightly packed heart, you’re missing a treat. The leaves are much more palatable later in the year. Early July is the perfect sowing time if you’re after mature heads in autumn. You’ll get stronger plants by growing in a sunny site on fertile soil that’s moistureretentive but not waterlogged.