Friarielli

Friarielli are the leafy shoots and unopened flower buds of Brassica rapa subspecies sylvestris, a turnip relative grown in Campania for its tops. They are picked young, before the yellow flowers open, when the stems still snap cleanly.

The naming is genuinely confusing, and most of the confusion in English comes from three separate collisions. First, friarielli and Apulian cime di rapa are the same species but different vegetables in practice: cime di rapa have thicker stalks and a compact broccoli-like head, friarielli are smaller and almost all leaf. Second, what American greengrocers sell as broccoli rabe or rapini is the same botanical plant, usually grown from Italian seed, but selected for a bigger head and a shorter growing cycle. Third, and most misleading, in northern Italy and parts of Lazio the word friarielli refers to small sweet green frying peppers, which are a completely different vegetable in a completely different family.

So a jar labelled friarielli bought in Milan may hold peppers, and one bought in Naples will hold greens. The Campanian meaning is the older one in that region and the one that matters for the dishes friarielli are famous for.

Bitter first, then mineral, then faintly sweet at the very end. The bitterness is the point rather than a flaw to work around: it sits somewhere between dandelion greens and mustard greens, sharper than kale, less iron-heavy than turnip tops.

Cooked properly the leaves go silky and the shoots keep a slight resistance, and the parts that catch on the pan turn nutty and almost caramelised. Garlic and chilli round the edges without covering anything, and the olive oil carries the bitterness rather than masking it.

Eaten with sausage, the effect is one of contrast rather than blending: the fat coats the palate, the greens strip it clean, and the next bite tastes like the first. Anyone raised on sweet vegetables will find the first mouthful startling and the third one addictive.

Wash them in plenty of cold water and lift them out rather than draining, so the grit stays behind. Do not dry them: the water clinging to the leaves is the cooking liquid.

Heat three tablespoons of olive oil in a wide pan with two crushed garlic cloves and a dried chilli. When the garlic smells sweet, add the wet greens, salt them, and put a lid on. Ten minutes over medium heat, then take the lid off, raise the flame, and let the last of the water go so the greens catch and brown slightly on the base of the pan. That browning is the flavour most home versions miss.

For sausage and friarielli, brown the sausage separately, split from the casing and crumbled or left whole and pricked, then fold it into the greens for the final three minutes so the fat runs into them. Serve with bread, not pasta.

For pizza, the greens must be fully cooked and well drained before they go anywhere near the oven, and they are best scattered on in the last thirty seconds or after the pizza comes out. Raw greens on a pizza burn before the base is done.

Other good uses: piled into a roll with smoked provola so the cheese melts into them, spooned under roast cod or baked salt cod, or stirred through a bean soup at the end.

A cut bunch is still a living plant and keeps respiring, which is why it wilts within a few hours on a warm counter. Unwashed, loosely wrapped in a damp cloth or a perforated bag, in the coldest drawer of the fridge at 0 to 4°C, it holds three to five days. Two things happen over that time even in the cold: the buds go on developing and open into yellow flowers, and the stems lignify and turn stringy toward the base. The leaves lose water and go limp first, and bitterness builds as the sugars are used up. Keep the bunch away from apples and bananas, whose ethylene speeds the yellowing.

Blanched for a couple of minutes, drained hard and frozen in portions, they keep six to eight months and come back softer. Already cooked in oil, they sit in a covered container in the fridge for four or five days, darkening as they go. An opened jar goes in the fridge with the greens pushed under the oil, since anything above the surface dries and browns; the oil clouds when cold and clears again at room temperature.

Fresh, they come as loose bunches of long thin stems with narrow deeply toothed leaves and small tight flower buds, mostly still closed and green. Open yellow flowers mean the plant has run on and the stems will be more fibrous. A good stem snaps rather than bends. The season in Campania runs roughly November to March. In jars, look for a short list: friarielli, oil, salt, sometimes garlic and chilli, and a dark green rather than khaki colour.

The substitution that happens constantly abroad is broccolini or Tenderstem, which is a broccoli and gai lan cross with thick sweet stems and big florets, and it behaves nothing like the real thing. Rapini or broccoli rabe, sold across the United States and Britain, is the genuinely close relative and the usual stand-in, though the Neapolitan variety has finer stems and smaller buds. Cime di rapa from Puglia are coarser, and gai lan has broad glossy leaves. In Naples a kilo is 2 to 4 euro in season; abroad a bunch of rapini is $3 to $5 or £2 to £3, and a 280g jar runs 5 to 9 euro.

Fresh friarielli grown in Campania almost never leave Italy, so outside the country the practical answer is broccoli rabe. In the US it is a standard supermarket green from October to April, sold as broccoli rabe or rapini for roughly 3 to 5 dollars a pound, and cheaper at Italian and Latin American grocers. In the UK, Natoora and larger Italian delicatessens carry cime di rapa in winter at about 8 to 12 pounds per kilo, and British turnip tops appear in February and March.

Jarred friarielli in olive oil are the one form that travels. Italian importers and online delis in both countries stock them at roughly 6 to 10 dollars or pounds for a 280-gram jar. Read the label twice: check that the ingredients say friarielli or broccoli di rapa in olive oil, and that the country of origin is Italy. If the jar shows small green peppers on the front, it is the other friarielli.

Frozen is the underrated option. Italian frozen-food brands sell cooked friarielli in 450-gram bags, they go straight from freezer to hot pan, and they cost a fraction of the jarred version.

Naples, between November and March, and preferably standing up. The sausage and friarielli roll from a neighbourhood rosticceria or friggitoria (the stalls around the Pignasecca market and up in the Sanità are the reference) is the form that tells you most about the ingredient.

Pizza salsiccia e friarielli is a useful test of any Neapolitan pizzeria. Watery greens or a flat, one-note bitterness means the kitchen opened a catering-sized jar.

Outside the city, the small towns around Vesuvius and the Nocera-Sarno plain grow most of the crop, and their trattorie serve friarielli with pork ribs through the winter. Around Easter, look for minestra maritata, the long-simmered soup of pork and mixed bitter greens in which friarielli play a part alongside escarole, chicory and borage.

In New York, Philadelphia and Boston, broccoli rabe with sausage is a fixture of Italian-American cooking and considerably easier to find than in London, because the dish crossed the Atlantic with Campanian emigration in the early twentieth century and never left.