Butternut Squash and Radicchio Pasta

I wasn't going to post about this recipe because I didn't think it was particularly successful, but Alex told me that I should go ahead and post it anyway.  So here I am posting about a recipe with very little to say.  My biggest complaint with this pasta was the radicchio.  Its bitterness is totally overpowering.  In every bite that contained even the smallest speck of radicchio I couldn't taste the sweetness of the butternut squash, the saltiness of the cheese or the buttery toasted pine nuts.  Nor could I taste the sage, which I think is the perfect herb accompaniment to butternut squash.  It was just bitter.  If I were a bigger fan of radicchio I would be a much bigger fan of the dish.  If you are a fan of radicchio then you will (probably) be a bigger fan of this dish than I was.  And that's all I really have to say about that...

Recipe after the jump!

Grilled Treviso (Radicchio) with Balsamic Vinaigrette

When I was conceiving of tonight's meal I knew I wanted to make our usual roast chicken, but I didn't want to do an arugula salad with it.  I wanted something a little more seasonal - a little different.  So I decided to "grill" up some Treviso radicchio.  I say "grill" because we don't have a grill here in NYC.  Instead I seasoned the radicchio with evoo, s&p and cooked it on the stove top in our grill pan.  Cooking it in the grill pan rather than on a grill means that you miss out on the smokey flavor of the grill, but you get a similar caramelization.  Cooking the radicchio mellows some of the bitterness and the balsamic offsets that natural bitterness nicely.  You really need to use a nice aged balsamic here or it will be more acidic than sweet.  Radicchio still isn't one of my favorite lettuces or veggies and I still prefer a simple arugula salad overall, but this was a really nice change and very seasonal.  The flavor of the grilled radicchio and the balsamic seemed so perfectly autumnal to me.

Recipe after the jump!

Sweet and Sour Radicchio

Who knew radicchio could be used in so many ways? In the past few weeks I have grilled it, tossed it raw in a salad, and now I have sauteed radicchio into a Sicilian-style agrodolce. I was a little nervous that the sweet and sour would be a little too sweet because of the sugar and the raisins, in addition to the apple cider vinegar which is fairly sweet in and of itself, but I really liked it. I served the radicchio with some spaetzle (not pictured here) that I tossed lightly in evoo and freshly ground black pepper.  I originally thought about tossing it with fregola or Israeli couscous, but somehow serving it with the spaetzle seemed like a better idea.  It was a wonderful combination.  I don't think I could eat a huge bowl of this radicchio, but it makes a very nice side dish.  In the future I think I will pair it with a simple herb roasted pork tenderloin and more spaetzle.  If you can't tell, I really liked the pairing of radicchio and spaetzle!  I think that spaetzle held up better than orzo pasta would have, and was really nice both on its own and when mixed with some of the radicchio.  Also, the spaetzle (due to the fact that it's egg-based) has the richness to cut the sweet and sour sauce that the radicchio was tossed in.

Recipe after the jump!

Lemony Garlic Roast Chicken Breasts and Radicchio Salad with Gorgonzola and Peppered Walnuts

Roast chicken is one of our old standbys.  We tend to keep bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts in the fridge at all times.  Roasting them up takes little to no effort or thought and provides us with a delicious dinner.  Another thing I love about roasting chicken breasts is that you can mix up flavors, seasonings, and herbs to make it a new dish every time.  The most common combination of flavors for us, and the one we used this time, is evoo, s&p, garlic, fresh thyme, and lemon.  The flavors are nice and light, and vaguely Mediterranean.  The only caveat is that if you use too much lemon the skin of the chicken never crisps up and the flavor and acidity of the lemon dominates everything else.

I went a little nuts at the grocery store the other day and bought three beautiful heads of radicchio (mostly because they just looked so pretty).  We used one last night for our Prosciutto-Wrapped Radicchio, but there were two more heads of radicchio staring up at me from the vegetable drawer.  So I decided to make some sort of salad to go with our roast chicken for tonight.  Actually, I gave Alex the option of making a random mixed green salad with leftover romaine or concocting some sort of radicchio salad.  He chose the radicchio over the romaine based on the justification that if we didn't use the radicchio up ASAP we would forget about it.  I think the same rationale applies to the romaine (which we have forgotten about in the past), but I'll go with it.  So I started looking up various radicchio salad recipes and this is the one Alex picked.  We didn't have any Cabrales blue cheese, and I'm not a huge fan of Roquefort, so I substituted Gorgonzola cheese, which I love.  If we had any Valdeon in the fridge I would have thrown that in as well, but our fridge isn't fully back up to speed after Aruba yet, although it is getting close.

Recipes after the jump!

Disappearing Zucchini Orzo and Prosciutto-Wrapped Radicchio

 
Several years ago I read Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle:  A Year of Food Life.  I went through a phase where I read every book even remotely related to food.  I have since grown out of that phase, but it must be said that Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was one of the better books I read then.  While the book was a very interesting read, what really stuck with me was her recipe for "Disappearing Zucchini Orzo."  I had grated zucchini to use in zucchini breads before, but mixing grated zucchini into pasta had never crossed my mind.  And boy is it good and easy.  I think this is the perfect gateway dish to get kids to eat zucchini (then again how would I know since I don't have any).  The zucchini isn't a distinct and overwhelming flavor in this dish - instead it is somewhat masked by the taste of the Parmigiano-Reggiano, but you are still getting several servings of zucchini down in a really delicious fashion.  I also love that the whole dish comes together in a matter of minutes.  While you boil the pasta, you can grate the zucchini, chop the onion and garlic, then saute everything together.  Voila!  An easy, healthy, vegetarian weeknight meal.

We served our orzo this evening with prosciutto-wrapped radicchio - something I have been meaning to make for months now.  Alex loves prosciutto and I love the idea of using random vegetables like radicchio in different ways, so it really was the perfect dish for us.  I think the tang of the balsamic vinegar that I sprinkled on after I took the radicchio out of the pan was what really made the dish come together.  Without the balsamic it would have been a little blah, but with the balsamic it was yummy.

Recipe after the jump!