Puntarelle

Puntarelle are not a vegetable in their own right, but a part of one. The plant is Cichorium intybus var. foliosum, the same species as every cultivated chicory, in the jagged-leaf Catalogna variety also sold as cicoria asparago or cicoria di Galatina. What you eat is the cluster of immature flowering shoots hidden inside the head: hollow tubes, white at the base and pale green at the tip, snapping crisp when fresh.

A whole head is really two ingredients stacked together. The outer leaves are long, dark, deeply serrated and far too bitter to eat raw; they get boiled and sautéed. The inner shoots, sheltered by those leaves, are milder, sweeter and structurally hollow, which is the property the entire dish depends on.

Sliced lengthwise into strips two or three millimetres wide and dropped into ice water, each strip curls tightly on itself, because the inner and outer surfaces of the hollow wall lose water at different rates. That curl is not decoration. It is what gives the dressing something to cling to, and it is why a straight-cut chicory salad never tastes like puntarelle even when the ingredients are identical.

One head yields roughly a third of its weight in cleaned shoots. That ratio explains everything about how they are sold and what they cost.

Bracingly bitter, but green-bitter rather than harsh: closer to dandelion or the pale heart of a radicchio than to the medicinal bitterness of raw endive. Underneath the bitterness there is a clean vegetal sweetness and a lot of water, so the first impression is more refreshing than aggressive.

The texture is the memorable part. The hollow walls shatter between the teeth with an audible snap, somewhere between celery and a very crisp cucumber, and the curled strips stay separate rather than clumping. Cold weather changes the flavour measurably: shoots harvested after a frost in January are noticeably sweeter than the same variety cut in November.

Then there is the dressing, which is at least half the experience. Pounded salted anchovy, raw garlic, white wine vinegar and olive oil produce something salty, sharp and deeply savoury that runs into the hollow curls. The finished plate tastes like a Caesar salad stripped of cheese, cream and sweetness, with the bitterness turned up.

If you have a whole head, start by peeling off the dark outer leaves and setting them aside. Break the inner cluster apart, cut away the hard base, then split each shoot lengthwise into strips two or three millimetres wide. A knife works; in Rome most people use a tagliapuntarelle, a wooden or plastic frame strung with steel wires that you push the shoot through to get even strips in one motion. They cost a few euros in any Roman market.

Drop the strips into a bowl of water with ice in it and leave them for one to two hours. They curl, they go glassy, and a good part of the bitterness leaches into the water. Change the water once halfway through if you want them milder. Then drain them properly and dry them in a salad spinner, because wet strips will slide the dressing straight off.

Make the dressing while they soak. Pound the garlic with a pinch of salt, work in the anchovies until they become a paste, whisk in the vinegar, then the oil in a thin stream, and finish with plenty of black pepper. Taste before adding any salt; the anchovies bring a lot. Dress the puntarelle at the last possible moment and serve immediately: after half an hour they wilt and the whole point is lost.

The outer leaves are the second dish. Boil them in salted water for 10 to 15 minutes, squeeze them dry and fry them in olive oil with a smashed garlic clove and a dried chilli. That is cicoria ripassata, and it means one head feeds you twice.

An untrimmed head keeps four or five days in the vegetable drawer, wrapped in a barely damp cloth or left in its perforated bag. Leave the base uncut until you use it, and leave the outer leaves on: they are the wrapper the plant grew for itself, and the inner bunch stays crisp long after the outside has gone limp. Once you have cut the shoots into strips, they live in a bowl of cold water in the refrigerator for about two days, with the water changed every twelve hours. Curling in cold water is what gives puntarelle their shape.

Past that point the strips slowly go translucent and lose their snap as water moves through the cut walls, and the soaking water turns cloudy with released sap. Drain and spin them dry before dressing, because a wet strip sheds the anchovy sauce instead of holding it. Raw puntarelle do not freeze: ice crystals rupture the cell walls and what thaws is pulp. The outer leaves are the exception, and boiled, squeezed and frozen in portions they hold six months and go into a pan straight from frozen.

Buy the whole head where you can, and judge it by weight and base. A good one feels heavy for its size, meaning a dense bunch of shoots inside rather than air, and the cut across the stem should be pale and moist rather than brown and dried out. The outer leaves should be dark green and stiff. Bend one of the outer shoots: it should break with an audible snap, and one that folds without breaking has been out of the ground a while. The shoots themselves should be closed, firm and white-green at medium thickness, since the very fat ones are often spongy inside and the thin ones give almost nothing once trimmed.

Pre-cut puntarelle sold in water are judged differently: the water should be clear rather than cloudy, the strips tightly curled and glossy, the cut edges free of brown rims. Ask when they were cut. Outside Italy the plant turns up at markets as Catalogna or asparagus chicory, and it is not dandelion, escarole, Belgian endive or radicchio. The season runs roughly November to March, and a head loses more than half its weight in trimming.

In Italy they are everywhere from November to March: markets, greengrocers and supermarkets all carry both whole heads and tubs of pre-cut strips sitting in water. Outside Italy they are genuinely hard to find, and the season is the same short winter window.

In the United States, look at Italian markets in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and the Bay Area, and at California farmers markets from December through February, where a handful of specialist growers plant them for chefs. Expect roughly $6 to $10 per pound for whole heads, more where they are sold trimmed. Some seed catalogues list the variety as Catalogna Puntarelle or asparagus chicory, which is the reliable route if you have a garden: it is an easy autumn sowing.

In the UK they turn up at Italian delicatessens, at a few London greengrocers, and in seasonal vegetable boxes from suppliers who work with Italian growers. Prices run about £8 to £14 per kilo. If none of that is available, a Belgian endive from any supermarket plus the anchovy dressing gets you most of the way there.

Wherever you buy, judge a whole head by weight and by the cut at its base: heavy for its size, pale and moist at the stem, outer leaves stiff rather than floppy.

Rome, in winter, and effectively nowhere else. Between November and March puntarelle appear as a contorno on trattoria blackboards across Testaccio, Trastevere, San Lorenzo and Pigneto, usually for 5 to 8 euros. A trattoria offering them in July is serving something else, and the same test applies to Roman artichokes.

The markets are worth as much as the restaurants. Campo de' Fiori is the picturesque one, the covered Mercato di Testaccio is where Romans actually shop, and Mercato Trionfale near the Vatican is the biggest. At all three you can watch stallholders pushing shoots through wire cutters and see basins of strips curling in cold water, which is the best free spectacle Roman produce offers.

In the old Jewish quarter around Via del Portico d'Ottavia they usually share a menu with carciofi alla giudia, the other vegetable that defines the Roman winter and spring. Further south, in the Salento region of Puglia where the seed variety takes its name, the same plant is on every market stall, but there it is mostly boiled and eaten as greens, so do not expect the Roman salad.