Delicious winter salads are a challenge because the usual ingredients are limited and mostly tasteless.
This blood orange and radicchio winter salad is more of a suggestion than a recipe! By combining two seasonal winter ingredients you get a taste that complements them both. I start by layering the oranges in slices on the bottom of the salad bowl. Then I add the radicchio, pickled red onions and Castelevetrano olives. Top it off with a vinaigrette made with the blood orange juice and walnut oil. Finish with a sprinkle with a few celery leaves and chopped tarragon and you will have a delicious winter salad.
If you have access to good vegetable market you might have multiple varieties of radicchio to choose from. Most of us are familiar with the dark reddish-purple Italian Chicory but there is also the Ventian Radicchio Castelfranco with its yellow leaves paint-speckled with purple splotches. Or the Tardivo radicchio, known for its long and curled leaf ‘fingers’ that are burgundy and white in color, often with a tinge of green. The Treviso variety is longer in shape, similar to a head of romaine lettuce but with the trademark radicchio coloring, and it tends to be milder in flavor.
If you source seasonal ingredients you can have delicious winter salads!
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