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by Chef Boy Ari
These days, the crowd at the Farmer's Market is like
a swarm of butterflies in a field of flowers, everyone
jostling for the nectar. The boys and I were catching
up on things when I heard a voice grumble from behind
me. A0
"Hey, (Chef Boy) Ari. Can you stand somewhere else?
Yer blocking my stall."
He has long, flowing hair, neck-length beard and sideburns.
The sign above his stand says "Fields of Wrath." I call
him Wrathful Steve.
It is, of course, totally bad form on my part to park
in front of his display, yakking over my plastic
coffee mug and obstructing serious shoppers. I apologize
and move.
Next thing I know, Wrathful Steve tosses a radicchio
at me, and not slowly. Deep maroon and bright white,
it looks like a cross between lettuce and cabbage, leafy
and tight. It bounces off my clumsy hands and pegs my
girl Bittersweet in the face. This might be more of a
problem if Bittersweet didn't have a little crush on
Wrathful Steve.
Wrathful Steve laments, "Nobody wants to buy these things
because they're too bitter. Can you figure out how to
take the bitter out of the radicchio?"
Bittersweet embraces this challenge with the fervency
of a Zen monk attacking a koan. Next thing you know,
she's in the kitchen, chopping and mixing and tasting.
Finally she emerges with a platter of red-skinned bundles
held together by ribbons of sweet onion tops. The radicchio-leaf
wraps are filled with a mixture of equal parts pan-toasted
walnuts and chopped Granny Smith apples, with crumbled
feta, dill, maple syrup and lemon juice mixed in to taste.
The taste reminds me of haroset, an apple/walnut dish
traditional to the Jewish holiday Passover. Meant to
resemble the mortar with which enslaved Jews built Egyptian
cities and pyramids, the sweetness of haroset symbolizes
the sweet hope for freedom that helped the Jews survive
the bitterness of slavery. Thus haroset is served alongside
a dish called "bitter herbs" (aka horseradish), which
symbolizes the overall bummer of slave life.
A Passover virgin, Bittersweet must intuit all of this,
because rather than taking away the radicchio's bitterness,
her filling works with it. While smothering the radicchio
with creamy sweetness, many of the ingredients - including
the apple and walnuts - contain bitter elements of their
own. This serves to couch the radicchio's grapefruit-peel
flavor in a seamless continuum between sweet and bitter.
Out-of-hand delicious it is. Take away the bitter it
doesn't. That is good enough for Bittersweet, but I do
not forget the mission. I stay the course of sweetness.
Armed with a wrinkled clipping from Better Homes and
Gardens (February, 2004), I read how to rid radicchio
of its bitter flavor: Cut radicchio lengthwise into four
wedges, removing root end. Soak in ice water for 30-45
minutes. Drain; pat dry with paper towels.
We decide to conduct an experiment to determine if this
technique actually works. First, Bittersweet makes two
cups of her apple/walnut filling. Then she divides it
into two bowls. In one bowl, she adds a cup of chopped
radicchio, untreated. In the other bowl she adds a cup
of chopped, treated radicchio. We conduct blind taste
tests with three people, all of whom select the salad
of treated radicchio as sweeter.
Of course, it isn't necessary to even prepare this elaborate
salad. After soaking radicchio in ice water, all you
have to do is chew a leaf to realize how sweet it is-versus
the untreated leaf that you spat out.
Taking the experiment even further, I soak more radicchio
in ice water. Then I change the water (which has taken
on the bitter flavor) and add more ice cubes. After another
hour I change the water again. All the while, the radicchio
keeps getting sweeter, and I can't stop munching those
plain leaves. Finally, I drain the radicchio and put
it on a plate in the fridge, whence those crispy, beautiful
leaves are quickly munched.
Back at the market, I report the results to Wrathful
Steve, who manages to crack a smile.
Then I ask, "So, why do you call your farm Fields of
Wrath?"
He says, "You look around at all these other farms with
foofy, happy names, like Harmony Farms, Lamb's Quarter
Farms, Fuzzy Poo-poo Farms85 (BLEEP!) that! I wanted
a name that was real."
Just then a cabbage moth flutters onto a head of Wrathful
Steve's sweet cabbage. I make a move to swat it. "Hey," he
says. "Bugs gotta eat too."
"You don't kill bugs in the Fields of Wrath?" I ask,
skeptical.
"Yeah," he admits, "sometimes I do. But then I pray.
I pray a lot."
Ah, Wrathful Steve: bitter on the outside, sweet on
the inside...just like those radicchio leaf wraps.
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