There will soon be carnival celebrations in the Veneto from where delicious radicchio, the beautiful bitter winter leaf, hails. You will find here a salad that celebrates it, sliding it up next to pear with a sharp dressing to enhance its flavour. Some of these recipes require patience and effort, but not much fussy technique – roasting the sweet squash separately for a soup, taking the time to bake a game pie that can be kept for days, or filling the freezer with iced goodness, a luxurious treat ready for when you need it.
Pumpkin soup, sage and chicken livers
If livers aren’t your thing, sprinkle with a few cooked nutty Puy lentils instead. All oven temperatures in these recipes are fan-assisted. Serves 4
pumpkin or winter squash 1.2kg
olive oil
celery 2 sticks
red onion 1
garlic 3 cloves
bay leaf 1
cognac or brandy 3 capfuls
chicken livers 500g
butter a generous knob
sage 1 sprig
dried chilli ½, crushed
Heat your oven to 180C/gas mark 6. Peel the squash and cut it into chunks. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast for 40 minutes or until tender, slightly dried out and toasted in places.
Peel the celery and chop into rough pieces. Peel the onion and cut into 4. Add to a saucepan along with the garlic, bay, 2 caps of cognac, a good slug of olive oil, a little salt and roughly 2 litres of water. Bring to the boil over a medium heat and simmer for 30 minutes.
Once cooked, remove the bay, add the roasted squash and blitz everything, with a stick blender or in a food processor, until smooth and silky.
When you are ready to serve, clean the chicken livers by removing any connective tissue and cut into 2 pieces each. Season and fry in the butter over a medium-high heat. Turn them over once seared on one side and add the sage leaves with a sprinkle of chilli. Turn down the heat a little, baste with the sage butter and after 2 minutes turn off altogether. Add a capful of cognac and shake the pan.
Serve the soup in warmed bowls with the livers and any pan juices drizzled over each portion.
Rustic pheasant, bay, savoy cabbage and bacon pie
I make so many vegetable pies that a meat one is something of an occasion. I enjoy the texture that wholemeal flour brings, but I understand if you’re more refined than me and want to use white. Serves 8
For the pastry:
salted butter 125g
wholemeal flour 250g
egg 1
For the filling:
pheasant 1
smoked bacon (hock would be nice) 1 x 200g piece
garlic 3 cloves
red onion 1
bay leaves 3, fresh
sage 1 sprig
nutmeg a small grind
clove 1
juniper berries 4
white wine 200ml
brandy or cognac 1 shot
savoy cabbage ½, or about 150g
cream 75ml
parmesan 30g, grated
egg 1
To make the pastry, mix the butter with the flour by hand, or blitz electrically, until it resembles crumbs. Then stir or pulse in the egg with 1 tbsp of cold water, until it wants to come together. Quickly knead the dough into a ball, cover and set aside to rest for 1 hour.
Season the pheasant. Heat a good heavy pot, just large enough for the bird, over a medium-high heat. Add 2 tbsp of oil and sear, turning a bit brown all over. This isn’t an exact science, but try and avoid burning the bottom of the pan.
Cut the bacon into 4 pieces, leaving on the rind. Peel the garlic. Peel and segment the onion into 6. Add all this with the bay, sage, clove, juniper berries, wine and cognac to the pot. Top up with water, enough to barely cover the bird. Bring to the boil, then turn to a simmer. Cook with the lid just askew, turning from time to time, until the thigh meat comes away easily from the bone, a good 90 minutes.
Wash the cabbage and slice into 1cm strips. Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and cook for 4 minutes. Drain and cool under cold water.
Remove the pheasant and bacon from the pot and set aside until cool enough to handle. Reduce the remaining liquid until you have about 400ml left. Add the cream and allow to simmer for another 5 minutes before removing from the heat.
Roll out the pastry and use it to line a 25cm flan shell. Mine doesn’t stick, so I don’t grease it, but treat yours accordingly. Chill it for 30 minutes while the oven heats to 180C/gas mark 6.
Tear the meat from the pheasant and cut or shred into pieces. Discard the bacon rind and chop the meat up a bit. Mix all back into the pot with the cabbage, a grind of nutmeg, parmesan and an egg. Fill the shell with the mixture, gently pressing the filling under the liquid, before baking for 40 minutes.
Allow to cool completely before serving. Keeps well in the fridge.
Radicchio, red wine, pear and fennel
There are many types of radicchio, but I like this salad particularly with the pale, speckled and soft castelfranco. Pear and pecorino is a killer combination here, the red wine dressing finishing it off so that it is tart and unusual. Serves 4
red wine 3 tbsp
honey 1 tsp
red wine vinegar to taste
olive oil 3 tbsp, plus extra for drizzling
fennel 1 bulb
radicchio 1 head
pears 2
pecorino cheese 200g
Heat the wine in a pan with the honey until it dissolves. Transfer to a bowl and add a pinch of salt and a dash of good red wine vinegar. Add 3 tbsp of olive oil.
Cut the fennel in 2 and slice into thin strips. Wash, dry and tear the radicchio into smallish pieces. Wash the pears, cut them in half, remove the cores with a teaspoon and then thinly slice them. Lightly season these ingredients with salt.
Arrange the salad, flatly, on a large serving plate so that you can see all the elements and spoon the dressing over evenly. Finish with the cheese, first whittled into thin slices with a paring knife, more oil and a good grind of freshly cracked black pepper.
Baci di Hammersmith
A perfect small frozen end to a meal or an afternoon pick-me-up with a black coffee. I like to use as dark a chocolate as I can find to contrast with the sweet torrone. Makes 10
egg yolks 6
caster sugar 80g
orange zest of ¼
vanilla pod seeds of ½
torrone (nougat) 100g
hazelnuts 75g, toasted
double cream 300ml
dark chocolate 300g
Whisk the yolks with the sugar, zest, a tiny pinch of salt and the vanilla seeds in a heatproof bowl. Suspend over a pan of simmering water as a double boiler and continue to whisk, adding 50ml of water in a slow stream. I like to do this by hand, but you can use an electric beater – the important thing is to move the eggs all the while. This way they gain volume while you avoid scrambling them. The beating process should last about 8 minutes, or until the mixture is hot, has increased in volume and is much thickened. At this stage, remove the bowl from atop the pan, but continue to whisk for 4 minutes or so until cool enough to place in the fridge to chill.
Chop the torrone into small pieces along with the hazelnuts. Whisk the cream to very stiff peaks. Chill it also. Carefully fold the cream into the egg mixture before adding the torrone and nuts. Fold in carefully to maintain as much volume as possible.
Fill small bowls, ramekins or, as I do, espresso cups, and freeze for at least 5 hours. Unmould by dipping one by one into a bowl of hot water for a moment. Run the tip of a knife around the rim to help release and tease them out on to a tray lined with greaseproof. Refreeze.
Then melt the chocolate in a bowl over a double boiler and spoon over each. Refreeze. I like to serve them in paper cases.
Joe Trivelli is joint head chef of London’s River Café (rivercafe.co.uk)
