Radicchio

Yesterday I started talking about balance in diet and life, then forgot to make my point, which I so often do, then laid in bed dwelling on it much of the night only to completely forget what it was in the morning.

Extremes on either end of diet is as senseless as extremes in many other areas of life. Cutting out processed food in exchange for real food is the point of this blog. But if you are on rare occasion at a friend’s house for a movie, to play cards, or whatever, and they put out a bowl of chips and dip and you make a scene, then you’ve lost sight of balance. We aren’t going to eliminate processed foods from the planet, we’re just not going to subsist off of them or stock them in our homes where we might turn to them in a pinch. There are a lot of real foods you can throw together quickly. Processed foods as we know them today didn’t exist for the most part even in the 1920s and 30s. People lived for a very long time without them so it’s not rocket science. But then a couple of generations were trained that if you don’t have the ability, time, or energy to prepare food or have a picky eater in the house, to rely on processed foods.

Processed foods seem simple, but once they are no longer on hand, you can start to eat simply, in an abundance of delicious foods that are balanced nutritionally while your mind is balanced mentally. If someone worries about what to eat, he or she should start at the beginning of this blog and, first things first, forgive herself for not knowing what to eat. While you’re at it, forgive yourself for everything you’ve ever done, said, or thought, and begin with a clean slate. (If you have trouble with that, contact me and I’ll help you because that’s another topic.) Then to make your food life even more exciting, slowly start to try new things you’ve never made or eaten.

One of Tony’s favorite restaurants – which we went to a couple of times before we had kids and picked up the accompanying jobs of chauffeurs, tutors, planners, troubleshooters, supervisors, and everything else that goes along with it – is called Il Radicchio (rah-Deek-ee-oh). It’s in Arlington, VA. You can order carry-out pizza and Italian dishes, but they’re mostly known for their page of sauces; you pick your pasta and then your sauce is separate. The sauce comes in a little pitcher and you put it all together on your plate.

I didn’t know what radicchio was until I went to the restaurant and saw it on their sign. Radicchio is from the chicory family and has kind of a peppery, bitter taste and you sometimes find it in mixed salad leaves. Besides the anti-inflammatory anthocyanin from the red in the leaf, radicchio is a good source of Vitamin K, shown to preserve bone mass and prevent vascular calcification^[1] (calcium deposits in arteries and valves).

I picked the round radicchio at the market, called Chioggia radicchio, which looks similar to red cabbage but it is much lighter weight and more striped with white. The other kind of radicchio shaped like romaine lettuce is called Treviso. (By the way, these are both towns near Venice, Italy – and I need to visit them.) I’ve often pick the radicchio out of my salads and put it in my husband’s because I don’t like the bitterness. Instead, you can make it less bitter by soaking it in ice water for a half hour, then drying the leaves to use in salads. You can also roast or grill it.

I added OJ to make sure I balanced the flavor but you can leave it out and increase the vinegar if you like the stronger flavors. Use one large head cut in eighths or two small ones cut in quarters. You could use higher heat for a shorter time but I already had something in my oven at 350.

Roasted Radicchio
One head of radicchio cut in wedges.
1/4 C extra virgin olive oil
2 T balsamic vinegar
2 T orange juice
1 t Dijon mustard
1/4 t paprika
Sea salt

Preheat oven to 350. Whisk sauce ingredients in a large bowl. Gently dip the radicchio pieces in the sauce to thoroughly coat. Place wedges on sprayed parchment-lined baking sheet along with any pieces that fell of the wedges. Drizzle with any remaining sauce from the bowl. Roast 15 minutes then gently turn wedges and turn pan in the oven. Roast another 15 minutes until tender and browned.  Sprinkle with sea salt to taste.