For a vicarious trip to Italy, think radicchio

By Barbara Damrosch

It was the perfect excuse to go to Venice. Inspired by a successful crop of gorgeous red radicchio in the early '90s, my husband and I took off for the plant's prime growing area, a romantic journey with an earthy mission.

In the Veneto region of northern Italy, the towns encircling Venice have given their names to radicchio's traditional forms. Chioggia, on an island to the south in the Venetian lagoon, is a mini-Venice with canals, and the radicchio type that bears its name is a round, dark red variety nourished in light, mineral-rich soil. Treviso, to the north, grows a more elongated head, like a small, red, white-ribbed romaine lettuce. Castelfranco Veneto, to the northwest, the birthplace of the Renaissance painter Giorgione, takes pride in an exquisite creamy-yellow, red-spotted radicchio with an open, flowerlike shape. A yearly festival is held in its honor in Giorgione Square.

In Italy, winter is radicchio's time. When we arrived in early February, a bitter wind was blowing off the Adriatic Sea, and puddles froze on Venice's sidewalks. But radicchio was being harvested in Chioggia's fields, grown in the traditional way by cutting off the first loose, green, bitter heads that formed at summer's end and allowing firm, round ones to regrow from the roots, reddened and sweetened by the cold. We saw Treviso radicchio sprouting from dug, cut roots, forced in cold, dark sheds to remove all trace of chlorophyll. Its leaves were long, crisp and fingerlike, brilliantly red and white. We encountered them again in restaurants, standing upright in glasses to nibble as an appetite stimulant. The presence of a chemical called intybin has inspired radicchio's fame as a digestive aid and gives it a pleasant bitterness, the perfect match for fatty foods. We enjoyed it in salads dressed with pancetta but found it more often in cooked dishes: roasted with eel, or chopped fine with onions and cooked in a risotto, or with gnocchi.

Growing radicchio used to be tricky and laborious, but the process is simple for modern gardeners. Newer varieties such as Indigo and Leonardo head up and turn red without the necessity of frost, are slower to go to seed and can sometimes be grown year-round as you would a robust lettuce. Direct-sow them in early spring for baby-leaf harvest, then sow again in July for a fall crop. After you have harvested the heads, cutting an inch above the crown, place some straw over the roots and they probably will resprout in spring. We've also had good luck overwintering the heads in a cold frame. The outer leaves may turn mushy, but a perfect little red heart hides at the center, an ideal tonic for a winter day when Venice is too far to reach.

Article copyright of Barbara Damrosch.  Originally published March 26, 2009 in The Washington Post and reprinted with permission. Creative Commons photo credit: Pete Reed