Hunter Angler Gardener Cook

I often find myself apologizing when I serve salads of mixed chicories. Thankfully, my apology is often unnecessary because Holly and I usually have good judgment in whom we invite to our table. But still, chicories are strongly flavored, and yes, bitter. Americans as a rule don’t take kindly to bitter tastes. This is to our detriment.

Bitter is bracing. Bitter cleans and jostles and leaves you feeling more yourself after eating several courses of rich food. It is why I serve them frequently, and why I must mumble an apology about the muscular nature of my salad even though I am not really sorry in the slightest. I like to cook rich food, and a salad of chicories is a fine way to lead my guests from the savory to the sweet portion of the meal.

Mind you, these are salads only for late fall to early spring. Chicories and their friends arugula and cress become overpowering once the weather warms; bitter is good, but there can be too much of a good thing.

The idea for this particular salad struck me as I was shopping at the farmer’s market in Davis last week: I saw absolutely gorgeous treviso chicories and had to buy them. A brilliant, deep red, treviso is fantastic sauteed quickly with olive oil and dressed simply with grated parmigiano cheese. The outer leaves serve well in salads.

So will my Italian red chicory, which looks like a pimped-out dandelion, as do the red lettuces I grow every winter. The Red Salad was born. Why add lettuces? They’re not bitter, you are thinking. No, they are not. But a proper salad is a balanced collection of green things, or, in this case, red.

Dressing a salad like this shouldn’t be too taxing. Oil and vinegar will suffice, provided they are of quality. I’d suggest a lush green olive oil and balsamic vinegar for the sweetness. In this case, I dressed the chicories with good Bariani olive oil from the market, Meyer lemon juice from my backyard tree and a teaspoon of maple syrup.

Bitter salad is tonic to the soul in these dreary days of late winter here in Northern California. But soon it will be springtime…

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