The Weeknight Kitchen · No-Cook Starter · Serves 4

Endive & Radicchio
with Hazelnuts

Name: Endive & Radicchio with Hazelnuts
Total time: 20 min
Yield: 4 servings
Ingredients: 300 g Belgian endive; 200 g radicchio; 60 g raw hazelnuts; 5 g flat-leaf parsley; 12 g Dijon mustard; 20 ml sherry vinegar; 7 g honey; 45 ml extra-virgin olive oil; 3 g Diamond Crystal kosher salt; 1 g black pepper

Crisp bitter leaves, a sharp mustard vinaigrette, and toasted hazelnuts — the salad that resets your palate before something rich, and the one that doesn't wilt.

~20 min total 15 min prep No cook method

Spoon cost

Time ●○○○○ Anytime

VegetarianGluten-Free

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Units

Ingredients

Bitter leaves need sweetness, fat, and salt — and a firm hand with all three. A vinaigrette that would be right on butter lettuce will read as sour and harsh here. The mustard and honey are doing real work: mustard holds the emulsion together and blunts the bitterness, honey balances it. Taste the dressing on an actual leaf, not off a spoon — it should taste slightly too rich on its own.

Before you start

Get these into the state the recipe asks for first — the steps that use them won't wait.

Hazelnuts toasted and cooled while you do everything else — they go in warm and soggy otherwise, and they need to cool before chopping
Leaves washed and dried thoroughly — vinaigrette slides straight off wet leaves and pools in the bottom of the bowl

Method

Cook's notes

Soak the radicchio if it's too bitter for you. Fifteen minutes in cold water, then dried well, takes a real edge off without costing you the crunch or the color. Endive rarely needs it.

Toast the hazelnuts even if the bag says roasted. Ten minutes in the oven and thirty seconds in a towel is the difference between a nut that tastes of nothing and one that carries the whole salad.

Mustard is structural. It is what keeps oil and vinegar together — leave it out and the dressing splits in the bowl and pools at the bottom.

This is the rare salad that survives sitting. Endive and radicchio are sturdy enough to hold for ten or fifteen minutes after dressing, which makes it a good choice when the main needs your attention at the last minute.

What it goes with: anything rich. The bitterness and the acid cut through butter, which makes it a good opener before brown-butter scallops or a braise.

Make ahead: the vinaigrette keeps a week in the fridge (shake before using) and the hazelnuts keep a week in a jar. Leaves can be washed, dried, and refrigerated in a towel-lined container the morning of.

Easier, if you like

Buy pre-toasted hazelnuts — Diamond of California and Trader Joe's both sell them, usually already skinned, in the baking aisle. Give them five minutes in a dry skillet to wake them up.
Skip the jar and whisk the vinaigrette right in the bottom of the salad bowl, then pile the leaves on top and toss up from underneath when you're ready.

Vegetarian and gluten-free; vegan with one swap

Vegan: swap the honey for maple syrup at the same amount.

Gluten-free: naturally gluten-free.

Nut swaps: toasted walnuts, pecans, or pistachios all work. For a nut allergy, use toasted sunflower or pumpkin seeds.

Add-ins: shaved parmesan or crumbled blue cheese (not vegan), thin slices of pear or apple, or a handful of pomegranate seeds.