Woman Gathering Herbs, Camille Pissarro, 1880.
Recipe: Escarole Salad with Sautéed Rosemary Pears, Pine Nuts, and Ricotta Salata
Italian-Americans were way ahead of everyone else in their love of bitter, a cooking angle that’s recently been taken up by restaurant chefs around the country. Bitter greens are now trendy, but their pull has always been in my blood. And on it goes, a bittersweet holdover from my ancestors’ days spent foraging for wild greens on sun-baked hillsides. Arugula, broccoli rabe, dandelions, escarole, and chicories of all sorts were on my family table when I was a kid, cooked and raw. Arugula wasn’t available at all in most markets in the sixties and seventies. My father planted cuttings that our neighbors had smuggled in from Sorrento. The stuff grew like the weed it is, taking over his little garden. Dandelions we picked from our lawn. I adored all those greens back then, and my admiration just grows. I’m constantly looking for new ways to serve them, stepping away easily from the traditional garlic and olive oil treatment.
My mother made raw escarole salads, usually with red onion, tomato, and maybe a handful of cubed provolone (this was before it was popular to shave cheese), tossing it all in a simple vinaigrette, whose only drawback, as far as I was concerned, was the presence of dried oregano, never a favorite taste for me. It was a great salad, and escarole is my favorite salad green. I love its ruffly edged, sturdy leaves, and light green color. It is faintly bitter when raw but also juicy, and it’s a really good mixer. Capacollo, pecorino, fruit, nuts—whatever you want to add, it can take it, so it’s an excellent base for improvisation.
Here’s my new fall take on the escarole salad.
Escarole Salad with Sautéed Rosemary Pears, Pine Nuts, and Ricotta Salata
(Serves 4)
2 ripe but firm pears (green or red Anjou, Bartlett, or Bosc would be my choice), unpeeled and cut into approximately ¼-inch-thick slices
Extra-virgin olive oil
A small shallot, red if available, thinly sliced
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
A big pinch of sugar
2 sprigs rosemary, leaves well chopped
1 large head escarole, torn into small pieces
A big handful of pine nuts, lightly toasted
¼ pound ricotta salata, crumbled
1½ teaspoons Spanish sherry vinegar
½ teaspoon soy sauce
A few scrapings of nutmeg
1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed
In a medium skillet, heat about a tablespoon of olive oil over high flame. When hot, add the pears and shallots, and season with a tiny pinch of salt, black pepper, a big pinch of sugar, and the rosemary. Sauté quickly, just until the rosemary gives off its aroma, about a minute or so. You only want to take the raw edge off the pears, not cook them through.
Place the escarole, pine nuts, and ricotta salata in a large salad bowl. Add the pears.
Whisk together the vinegar, soy sauce, nutmeg, garlic clove, and about 2 tablespoons or so of olive oil, seasoning with salt and black pepper. Pour this over the salad. Toss gently.
Erica De Mane 
A winner!
A nice vegetarian thing,Erica. Sorry to say but I’m not a big fan of arugula…it’s overused out here. It’s in EVERYTHING, even cheeseburgers! My daughter pounds kale, another green I’m not fond of. I’m like Popeye: I have grossly deformed forearms and I love spinach…yes, with lots of garlic and olive oil. Drenched, in fact. Does this make me lame?
I love this salad and I love the painting.
This is a beautiful recipe. Your vinaigrette is fascinating. I will definitely whip this up especially since the markets here are resplendent with pears and chicorée scarole. i too love all bitter greens, with one little hesitation. In fact I have been meaning to ask you about this but it keeps slipping my mind. I know you love celery leaves, and I want to love them too, but there is something about their particular bitterness that just does not attract me. Celery here is Paris is generally more gutsy than what I used to get in the states. It’s the vegetable equivalent of gaminess. I just hate tossing out the luxurious spectacle of foliage topping my celery bunches.
Thanks Marieta. I think you’ll really like this salad, and if you prefer, you don’t need to saute the pears. You can add them raw. THe only thing is, the quick cooking tempers the rosemary. Add less rosemary, in that case.
Now, about the celery leaves. Try mixing in a few with another flavor, such as fennel. See how that goes. I like mixing parsley with celery leaf. Heat makes it gentler. I often throw a handful into a pasta sauce at the last minute, letting it heat through. You can also try adding a bit to an herb pesto. Also, there are two types of celery I find at the greenmarket. There’s the regular type, grown for its stalks, that has a small amount of leaves, and there’s the type that’s grown for its leaves, having small stalks and abundant leaves. I’m not sure what you get in Paris, but the type grown for its leaves is dark green and super strong tasting, almost like borage. Let me know how your celery experience is going.
Best,
Enrica
Thanks Liti. Thanks Michael. I love this recipe.
my mother, [from napoli] used to make a similar salad…using a combo of ‘scarole, curly endive & romaine. she never used rosemary & used gorgonzola as the cheese. no soy sauce & no nutmeg. sometimes the pears & often she used chunks of oranges. w/ italian bread, a platter of cheeses, a glass of wine, it was lunch! i love the bitters, too…must be in the italian DNA! the curly endive is very bitter. i’ll have to make this just for old times…Z
Zingara,
Chicory salads were my mother’s favorites. My non-Italian friends were horrified by them, thinking they were poison.
Erica, dear…I made it to go w/ Sunday dinner. I followed your recipe w/the exception that I did not use rosemary nor nutmeg. Everything remained status quo. It was an enormous hit w/ family & friends. A couple of those of italian background remembered similar salads made by their mothers. It made for some lively conversation & plenty of sloppy, schmaltzy nostalgia.
Zingara, That’s great. Love to hear this kind of stuff.
Erica