Chic Chicories taught us to see salad through pink glasses

The low season can be bleak for fresh vegetable lovers. There are only as many options as we can convert a cauliflower or rutabaga before we are desperate for some color. Even collards and kale can lose their shine after a few months. Chicories come into play there.

Radicchio, Escarole, Frisée and Endive are all technically chicories– In fact, they are all the same. For a long time, people have tinkered with plant genoma and weed through selective breeding according to our will. Salad – another member of the Chicorée Stamm – is a remarkable example that no longer cries bitter white juice when cutting; Other chicories have been changed by generations of selection for larger leaves, less bitterness and loving color.

Chicories were grown in ancient Egypt for the first time and did not take long for them to spread to Rome, where they have grown seriously for thousands of years. Until recently, Chicory, along with hairstyle or the occasional Treviso, could not simply overtake themselves outside of Italy, but they no longer have to hike to Veneto to know a radicchio breeder. You have Lane Selman for it.

In North America, chicories have no larger cheerleader as Selman, professor for practice at Oregon State University and co-founder of the Culinary Breeding Network-a partnership between plant breeders, farmers and chefs to identify new varieties of the vegetable varieties that may be suitable for the Pacific North North cooling climate.

Creating consumers’ demand for bitterness is not always easy, but the chicories have an undeniable characteristic in their favor: they are really cool.

“Radicchio is strikingly beautiful and unique in appearance,” says Selman. “The world is so visual today with social media, and people choose with their eyes first.” She points out that the novelty of Chicores (for Americans) practically markets the plant, but that did not prevent them from producing annual events such as Chicory Week and Sagra del Radicchio. But their real motivation in promoting this often overlooked winter vegetables is not in Instagram engagement-es to give the North West farmers a little as a root vegetable during the cold and rainy off-season.

The farmers have appreciated these efforts, not only because it offers a small financial bottleneck in the off -season, but also because Radicchio is a cultural connection to the food for some. Jason Salvo, owner of the 15-hectare local root farm outside of Seattle, writes in The Radicchio Zine (produced for the chicory week of the culinary breeding network). Radicchio comes from our increasing separation from our own cultural traditions. ”

It is time to rethink winter “Greens” when you collect in the shades of jewelry-colored grenade, millennial pink and absinthe with a Claret mist. Thanks to the multidisciplinary efforts of plant breeders, farmers, chefs and a very passionate vegetable lover, the moment was never right.