Radicchio, Fennel, and Arugula Salad With Blue Cheese and Pecans

Wednesday July 30

As we mentioned a week ago, the garden has been producing more radicchio than you can shake several sticks at. We've given some away, and tossed some into lunchtime salads. But this salad leapt out at us when we saw it on Epicurious. Almost all its reviewers gave it four forks, the word "bitter" was conspicuously unmentioned, and it contained a bunch of things that we had a lot of, including a fennel bulb purchased at Findlay Market last week. Of course, we had to tailor a number of ingredients to our pantry and preferences - our preferred blue cheese is gorgonzola rather than roquefort, we used a last scattering of the nice pecans that Helene sent us last year instead of walnuts - they've been in the freezer, where they keep pretty well - and we left the nuts whole instead of chopping them up, which meant that they were less likely form a nut cluster at the bottom of the salad bowl. And you know what? Those reviewers were right. The sweet fennel somehow interacts with the bitter radicchio and the peppery arugula, and the result was savory and well-blended, not bitter at all.