Sausages with Caramelized Onions and Radicchio

Wednesday July 23

With a bumper crop (whatever that means exactly; one so large that you have to tie it to your bumper?)* of radicchio coming in this looked like the perfect dish: one for which we already had all the ingredients.

Our radicchio is radicchio di Milano, whose scientific and poetic life you can read all about at Holt's fascinating site:
Vergil's Garden.
Click for all about the multiform species Cichorium intybus.**


Oh, about the RECIPE.
1) Radicchio by any other name would still be bitter. Following Chinese tradition we added a pinch of sugar to the mix. Not following Chinese tradition, we added a little cubed potato to the pot liquid and let them steam to spread the flavor out a little. We think this was a pretty good save for something that threatened to leave sweaters on our teeth.
2) Radicchio is NOT spinach. It's a green. It takes a good 20-30 minutes to cook down to the point where it's not squeaky. Do not believe anyone who claims that it's done in two minutes.

So, in the Epicurious recipe, we would DOUBLE the amount of red onion and HALVE the amount of radicchio.

*OED [perh. from BUMP n.1 or v.1: with notion of a ‘bumping’, i.e. large, ‘thumping’ glass.]
1. a. A cup or glass of wine, etc., filled to the brim, esp. when drunk as a toast.
2. slang. Anything unusually large or abundant. (Cf. whopper, whacker, thumper, etc.) Esp. freq. in attrib. use = exceptionally abundant or good .
1759 Gentl. Mag. XXIX. 271/2 In some of the midland counties, anything large is called a bumper, as a large apple or pear.

**AKA: chicory, wild chicory, blue daisy, blue sailors, coffee chicory, coffee weed, common chicory, succory;
barbe de capucin, chicorée, chicorée à café, chicorée amère, chicorée bleue, chicorée commune; Zichorie, Sonnenwedel, Wegwarte, Blaue Distel, Kaffeezichorie, Sonnenkraut, Sonnenwirbel, Wegtritt, Wegwächter, Wilde Zichorie; radicchio selvatico, cicoria selvatico.
Radicchio, Roter Chicorée, Rote Endivie, Veroneser Radicchio; radicchio, radicchio di Verona, radicchio di Treviso, etc.