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Dear Farm Friends,
Last week’s beloved underdog was escarole. This week it’s radicchio’s turn. Radicchio has definitely got flashier looks, in fact it may be the most gorgeous vegetable, but overall I’d say its a harder sell than escarole. If escarole is like trying to get an indifferent friend to vote, then radicchio is like getting someone from the other side (happy Halloween muahahaa!) to see your point of view. If you don’t love radicchio already, its not impossible to love, but will take some work. Like building a serious friendship with someone who is going to vote for that person you loathe. Not easy, but both necessary and worth the effort.
We gotta face it, radicchio is bitter. In our culture, we are trained to believe that bitter is bad. I’m not going to go into a whole thing about how all the cool people in Europe like radicchio, there’s plenty of that out there. Suffice to say that some people view bitter as a flavor of interest. And we’re here because we sometimes want something beyond sweet, salty, and deep fried, right? We also learn that passionate disagreements are bad and scary. But how about the exciting flavors of getting outside our political or social bubble? Initially, it might taste a little...bitter.
Your best bet is to first eat radicchio in a salad, mixed in with other more neutral greens like lettuce, and perhaps a sweet dressing as a counterpoint. If you can handle that, then you can work up to more advanced behavior like drenching it in olive oil and grilling it.
If getting close to someone who you passionately disagree with feels creepy crawly halloweeny scary to you, take a little risk and do it anyway! Let's push ourselves a little bit. It’s a fun challenge and our society needs it. Or at least give radicchio a try.
John
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