Puntarella salad

I have been asked many questions about my involvement with Odeon Cinemas’ luxury “movies with meals” project, The Lounge. One of the most intriguing is the notion that I might try to theme the meals in accordance with the films. Some might be comparatively easy: The Artist, for example, could have something French, light and airy – quenelles, perhaps – and The Iron Lady would undoubtedly feature halibut, as her screen incarnation seemed to be looking forward to it so much. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo could feature a smorgasbord and I daresay I could come up with something for W.E. (cold fish?) although Shame and War Horse might be more problematic. The one complete shoo-in would be a puntarella salad with Coriolanus.

I simply did not get puntarella when I first discovered it some 20 years ago. I came by a box of the strange but beautiful plants. I tore off a stem and ate it raw and spat it out in a mouth-puckering state of disbelief. Untamed, it is about as bitter as a chicory can get. It needs a bit of handling. The outside leaves should be torn away, washed and boiled briefly before being dressed with olive oil and lemon and served with roast meat, like the cicoria to which it is closely related. It is the stalks in the middle that are addressed as salad.

At markets such as the Campo dei Fiori in Rome, you will find plastic bags of puntarella that have been cut and washed for you, alongside other prepared salads, trimmed baby artichokes and topped and tailed fagiolini verdi (if they are in season). Should you be lucky enough to find puntarella elsewhere, you will have to prepare it yourself, but this is not a burdensome task. The important part of the preparation is the soaking of the salad in cold water for a couple of hours, which has the merit of making the shoots even crisper while drawing out much of the bitterness.

The traditional dressing for puntarella – rarely strayed from in Rome, in my experience – is a robust mixture of chopped anchovies, white wine vinegar and olive oil. It is an aggressive mix but one that I find addictive. That combination of bitterness, salt and sour is typically Roman and one can imagine it being chomped by a bunch of centurions 2,000 years ago as easily as in a restaurant in the Trastevere today. Coriolanus would have regarded it as a little dainty perhaps, but enjoyed it nevertheless.

I was going to commend this traditional fare to you – well I still do – but got distracted when we took the pictures. I had the puntarella and I also happened to have a few Seville oranges looking for a home. I debated whether to partner them with the puntarella. The question was whether the oranges were just bitter like the salad, thus compounding the felony, or sour like the vinegar, complementing the salad. In the end, we made both the traditional salad and the version below.

There is a simple test on these occasions: which one did the extraordinarily greedy (and skinny) photographer eat and finish? He concluded that whereas the zest of the orange is indeed bitter, the juice is sour.

Rowley Leigh is the chef at Le Café Anglais

rowley.leigh@ft.com

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Puntarella salad with anchovies and Seville orange

Ingredients

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1 head of puntarella

Puntarella is in the height of season now but is, I will have to concede, not easily found. Substitutions can and might have to be made. The salad will work well with curly endive, Radicchio or Witloof endive, the flavours being similar if lacking puntarella’s special crunch. A head of puntarella should serve six as a starter.

Rowley’s drinking choice

The aggressive seasoning – especially the orange – will, I am afraid, murder fine wine. A gutsy white from central Italy such as a Trebbiano, Pecorino or Fiano d’Avellino, or a coarse and racy red will cope very well.

10 salted anchovy fillets

2 Seville oranges

4 tbs strong olive oil

freshly milled black pepper

Discard the leaves from the outside and top of the puntarella and separate the stalk clusters, breaking them off or cutting them from the base. Cut these in half and then slice them into thin strands. Rinse them carefully in cold water and then soak in a large basin of very cold water for at least an hour, preferably two. Drain and then dry the stalks in a salad spinner.

Chop the anchovies quite coarsely and mix them in a bowl with the grated zest of one of the oranges and the juice of both. Add the olive oil and a good milling of black pepper and then turn the puntarella very thoroughly in this mixture. Serve with plain country bread, either as a starter or as a side salad to a piece of grilled fish or some grilled lamb chops.