Puntarelle Alla Romana Recipe (Puntarelle Salad With Anchovy and Garlic Dressing)

For somebody that’s as obsessive about Italian delicacies as I’m (by which I imply: lots), I’ve solely been to Italy however one time, for a mere 10 days one November awhile in the past. However I packed numerous consuming into that one quick journey, together with tasting and falling in love with puntarelle alla Romana for the primary time, then continuing to order it day by day the remainder of the time I used to be in Rome. (Late autumn is the start of puntarelle season in Italy, which runs from October to April.) 

Puntarelle salad is made by tossing crisp, juicy shreds of the principally mild-mannered bitter inexperienced with a potent anchovy- and garlic-heavy dressing. The flavour of the salad is intense, little doubt, however, paradoxically, the feel and taste of the puntarelle sands many of the edge off the garlic and anchovies, making it potent, however totally nice. Living proof: My Midwest-raised spouse doesn’t take care of salty, intense issues like anchovies, olives, or capers, and but even she loves this salad. It would look like an odd dish to obsess over, however I like it madly, and I do know I’m not the one one.

From a distance, heads of puntarelle look lots like different members of the chicory household they belong to, with a crown of lengthy, slender, serrated leaves, with pale white ribs and deep inexperienced dandelion-like fringes, not not like escarole. However these outer leaves conceal a weird shock inside: a gnarled cluster of pale inexperienced asparagus-like shoots, oftentimes knotted round each other like a freaky, many-fingered fist. (The shoots’ imprecise resemblance to asparagus explains why one other identify for puntarelle in Italian is cicoria asparago, or “asparagus chicory.”) 

Whereas the center of puntarelle is typically braised, it’s mostly served uncooked, both as particular person spears on an antipasto platter, or within the aforementioned salad. For the salad, the shoots are sliced into fantastic, lengthy shreds with a knife, or, higher but, utilizing a devoted puntarelle cutter created from a collection of gridded metallic wires strung tautly throughout a picket body, which makes fast work of it. The shreds are then positioned in a bowl of ice water for an hour or two, after which they type elegant, spiraled curlicues. (Produce stands and supermarkets in Italy promote pre-shredded and pre-curled puntarelle, eliminating the work totally.) After that, the curls are tossed with a dressing created from olive oil, crimson wine vinegar, a great deal of pounded garlic and anchovies, herbs, and different salty, cured issues like chopped olives or capers. 

Once I got here dwelling from Italy, I seemed excessive and low in my native farmer’s markets and specialty shops, however it appeared that no one right here within the Boston space grew puntarelle. Nor was it the form of factor that confirmed up as an import from elsewhere, so my transient, passionate love affair got here to an abrupt and properly, bitter, finish. (Puntarelle does present up in larger markets like New York Metropolis and Los Angeles, so these of you residing in locations like which might be lucky sufficient to maintain an ongoing relationship with the vegetable.) 

Till I made a decision I may reside with a stand-in for the puntarelle, that’s. Whereas it doesn’t actually resemble the vegetable, at the least in its native type, its fellow chicory-cousin endive truly does make a fairly nice substitute. Not solely does it have an analogous crisp-juicy texture and a mild-but-piquant bitterness, however—as I found after experimenting with it a bit—it additionally curls properly when lower into shreds and iced down for awhile! It’s not the identical, by any means: Its texture is a little more starchy-fibrous than that of puntarelle, and it doesn’t curl fairly as dramatically. But it surely scratches the identical itch for me, and I make it on a regular basis.

The strategy is similar as described above, with just a few variations owing to the substitution. For starters, I like to make use of a combination of white (Belgian) endive and crimson endive, which resembles white endive in type and taste, besides streaked crimson just like the treviso—one other chicory that has red-and-white variegated leaves like radicchio—it has been crossed with. (My native Dealer Joe’s sells a mixture of white and crimson in small packages.) To prep it, you quarter the heads with out eradicating the core. You then slice every quarter lengthwise by way of the core into 1/4-inch-wide items. Leaving the core connected lets the items type frilly florets that curl chaotically when positioned in ice water, giving them a bit extra of a puntarelle-like look. 

If you may get your arms on precise puntarelle, by all means swap it out for the imposter right here. As soon as in a blue moon, I’ve been capable of procure the actual deal myself, and it was pretty much as good as I remembered when made with this recipe. Both manner, it will do till the day we will each get again to Rome once more.