Thursday: Raddichio pasta

Spaghetti with octopus and slivered Treviso radicchio.

We recently made a pasta with mustard greens and goat cheese; this one is rather similar, although radicchio doesn't have quite the same bite as mustard greens do.

Monday: Radicchio-Barley Soup

Radicchio-barley soup with shaved Parmesan cheese.

Radicchio is a member of the chicory family, like our friend puntarella. Much of the radicchio grown in the US apparently ends up as an accent in pre-packaged salad mixes, but we actually vastly prefer it cooked. Unlike lettuce greens, radicchio is sturdy enough that it won't fall apart when sauteed, braised, or boiled - and its bitter flavor holds up well in starchy dishes, like risotto or this barley soup.

This soup is very simple, but it tastes surprisingly complex:

RADICCHIO-BARLEY SOUP

3 heads radicchio, chopped into strips
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup pearl barley
6 cups stock/water
Parmesan, grated finely

Sautee garlic and onions in olive oil, stir in radicchio and sautee until wilted, and then add barley and stock or water and boil until barley is tender, about 20-30 minutes. Serve with a generous amount of grated Parmesan on top.

Tuesday: Spaghetti Nero di Seppia

Spaghetti nero di seppia (squid ink pasta) in a seafood cream sauce with baked treviso radicchio.

We've never made a cream sauce for pasta before, and ended up concluding the texture of this one was a bit too thin (should have started with a roux) but it was still delicious. The "seafood" was tinned octopus and cuttlefish.

Squid ink pasta is frequently made with the cuttlefish ink added directly to the sauce, but this spaghetti had been infused with the ink (thus the black color). You can also buy the actual cuttlefish ink in small packets....we have one in the pantry waiting for us to decide what to do with it.