Wednesday 12 November 2008

Red

There are times when a simple surprise blows you away.

On a cold, November day I venture out to the allotment. Cycling through some very large puddles I arrive there. Soaked to the skin.

Decide to pull up some raddichio. Wet, wet, wet clay soil clinging to the leaves - awful. Tatty and awful. Set off home again. It gets dark early - 4. o'clock in the afternoon. Geesh. More rain. Is it all worth it? At home I put the fire on and examine the sad specimens on our kitchen table...
Wait. The roots look long and strong. It doesn't seem to mind our heavy soil..

Peeling off the outside leaves unearths a slug-free gloriously crisp sea of crimson. I'm so glad I bothered. Lovely to see such colour now.

VERDICT:
(I found raddichio very easy to grow and I guess the heads cost us in total about 5p each. I've eaten it before in upmarket Italian restaurants but never so fresh, and never organically grown. So far we've eaten it with goats cheese, olive oil, bacon... - I understand the heads can be stored until Christmas - though I haven't tried this yet. My thinking is - it might make a lovely Christmas day starter...All in all it is a really useful crop to grow and harvest in November. We will definitely grow it again next year).

For more information about raddicchio click this link:

http://www.italianmade.com/

2 comments:

  1. Looks fab - which variety of seeds did you use

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi there Jacqui,
    Glad you like it. I used the variety:
    Radiccio Treviso Precoce Mesola from Thompson and Morgan. It may be the beginning of an adventure into all the other exciting varieties there are out there...

    ReplyDelete

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