**The Art of Building a Delicious Radicchio Salad**

As we begin this recipe, it's essential to understand that the foundation of any great salad is the quality of its ingredients. In this case, our star ingredient is radicchio, a leafy green with a beautiful, intricate structure and a flavor that's both sweet and slightly bitter. Our chef has carefully selected three varieties of radicchio for this recipe: costal franco, treviso, and another type that's been lost in translation - we'll get to that later.

As we prepare the quinoa, it's clear that our chef is a perfectionist when it comes to texture and presentation. We're draining the quinoa to remove as much water as possible, leaving behind only the loose, germ-like particles that are essential for the dish. This process is crucial in preventing the quinoa from becoming mushy or overcooked.

Next, we're adding spicy and sweet elements to our dressing. The combination of gochugaru (Korean chili flakes) and Aleppo pepper flakes may seem unexpected, but trust us - it's a game-changer. Gochugaru has an almost inherent sweetness that balances out the heat, while Aleppo adds a deep, slightly smoky flavor. We're also using honey to thin out the dressing and prevent it from burning.

With our spice blend in place, we can start to bring the flavors together. A quick simmer over low heat will allow the chili flakes to bloom, infusing the dressing with their subtle yet intense flavor. As we add olive oil and rice vinegar to the mix, the aroma of this vinaigrette begins to take shape.

Now it's time to talk about seasoning. Our chef emphasizes the importance of building a salad in layers, allowing each element to absorb the flavors of those around it. This is where salt comes in - a pinch can make all the difference in bringing out the natural flavors of our ingredients. And speaking of salt, we've added an extra dose to taste as we go.

As we assemble our salad, our chef has opted for a hands-on approach. We're breaking up some treviso and adding it to the quinoa, followed by a drizzle of dressing that's been seasoned with just a touch more salt. The result is a vibrant, poppy green color with an irresistible aroma.

To finish off this salad, we've added some crunchy hazelnuts (toasted to perfection, of course) and crumbled cotija cheese - a Mexican delight with a rich, salty flavor that adds depth and complexity to our dish. And finally, we're sprinkling some fresh cilantro on top for freshness and texture.

The final result is nothing short of stunning. Each element of this salad has been carefully considered and balanced to create a true masterpiece. The first bite reveals a world of flavors - the sweetness of radicchio, the spiciness of gochugaru, and the richness of cotija cheese all coming together in perfect harmony.

As we take our first taste, we're reminded that sometimes simplicity is the greatest beauty of all. This salad may seem straightforward on paper, but it's truly a symphony of flavors and textures that will leave even the most discerning palates singing. And that's what makes this radicchio salad so special - it's not just about the ingredients; it's about the experience of building something beautiful with your own hands.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enif you want to break a couple of them apart like that's fine i prefer to just like leave the leaves a little bit more whole and then eat my salads with like a knife and fork but then again i eat pizza with a knife and fork so it's not really saying much i draw the line at burgers this recipe for this salad came out of a desire to kind of showcase like how i like making salads in winter cold weather and winter is about like anything but lettuce and there's so many other things that make for great salads during that cold weather season radicchio is kind of top of the list for me it's in the chicory family they are this wonderful family of very assertively flavored um leafy veg anything i think you know that lettuce can do radicchio can do better i have to say hazelnut is my favorite nut i like dye for hazelnut almonds are good too i celebrate the walnut pistachio i mean sure nothing to sniff out but i'm sorry like cashews i just don't think they're that good like you like they're not does anybody like want to die for a cashew no all right so these are going in the oven and we're gonna forget about it okay it's gonna be about seven to ten minutes something in that range for 350 degrees when you apply heat to it you are changing the fats you are developing flavors you know you are unlocking aromatic compounds there's just so many different things that go into those processes and so much flavor becomes accessible when you do that this is at about eight or nine minutes those look great i mean it's just like a whole order of magnitude darker but i think we're still on the right side of the line you know i think like five more minutes and they'd be a little bit too much kind of like um you know kind of accurate bitterness but this looks great to me oh yeah this guy let's do a demo if you're toasting nuts in a skillet all the heat is coming from the bottom of that pan pretty much right so your contact area is actually very very very small so what that means is you have nuts that are very unevenly toasted you will never i repeat never get nuts like this okay if you toast them dry in a skillet doing them in the oven low and slow it really just roasts them throughout how do you turn salad into dinner more or less you need a little bit of protein you need a little bit of like you know kind of texture and a couple things going on for it to really feel like a meal i find that the black quinoa has like the most texture to it and the most kind of pronounced nutty kind of grassy flavor i'm going to grab you know a pot of water and then we're going to cook this quinoa like pasta when i say cook it like pasta i mean an excess of water once it's boiling the grain is going to go in it's going to simmer until it's al dente or tender and then all the water is going to be drained out and i'm going to return it to the pot just to kind of let it steam out a little bit of the excess liquid at that point i want fluffy distinct grains that are going to separate that are going to disperse throughout whatever i'm throwing them into good amount of salt and then quinoa is going to go right in we can leave it uncovered just so you're looking at it making eye contact with it not forgetting about it and just walking away so let's see what's happening with this here quinoa all right this is looking good here's what we're going to do we're going to drain it i want to take out as much of this water as possible you're going to get these like you know these loose you know kind of germs kind of coming off of the uh the quinoa and that's what you're looking for so now off heat i'm going to cover it a little bit extra moisture is going to steam out of that quinoa i'm just going to kind of pour it off when i go to use it in a few minutes all right spicy things and sweet things you know very often can go together especially in savory culinary applications i'm gonna do a couple tablespoons of honey i'm just gonna thin this out with a little bit of water i just don't want it to start to burn so we've got um gochugaru and aleppo as our mild crushed red pepper flakes here gochugaru you know korean chili flakes just a wonderful addition to your pantry because they're relatively mild they have an almost inherent sweetness to them so i'm just going to bring this to a really quick simmer over on the stove and that's just going to bloom the flavor of the chili all right so we just brought it to a quick simmer quick little infusion it also just dissolves the honey a little bit so that it's going to disperse nicely through our dressing so i'm going to throw in our olive oil and then rice vinegar there's a lot of flavors going on in there but until you put a pretty decent amount of salt in there it's not really even going to taste like much with the salt in there everything's just like turned up it's like wanting to catch in the back of my throat just a little bit more it's really nice being able to build a salad in a bowl and be able to kind of manipulate a little bit does wonders you want to you know get each leaf coated with the right amount of dressing you want to season by dispersing you know salt whatever else you know across like as much of the surface areas you can the way these sort of petals the way these leaves are arranged is sort of in these like concentric rings right so if you kind of just like find the edge sort of pull the leaf apart um you can just sort of like work your way around and not necessarily tear them all when it comes to radicchio one type is great two types is better three types i feel like makes you an all-star and so fun i'm just breaking up some of this treviso i'm gonna throw some of this quinoa in here i'm gonna put in some dressing now this dressing has been seasoned up with just with salt you know i'm gonna bump up like a little extra um salt in here you need to be tasting as you go always you know see is the amount of dressing enough you know don't use it all right away use about half see where you're at the salt is there all right ready to take this to the platter sometimes i like just honestly use my hands for this stage after i'm done but i just find like all those different shades of radicchio all the color all the textures all the different flavors just so fun like a little like extra scatter quinoa just make sure you've got enough in there a little final drizzle of dressing you know hazelnuts like you can chop them you know when they're this toasty and crunchy you can just kind of crush them with the flat of your hand you know you can't do that with an under toasted nut or god help me a cashew especially a raw one this is cotija um it's just a really lovely salty kind of funky cheese from mexico and some cilantro there we go first i want to like taste a piece of costal franco there's like this warmth to it that's amplified by the hot honey vinaigrette like if you're hesitant you know hearing that title and thinking that it's going to be like overtly spicy it's really not and i get a lot of flack at home for creating salads that are frankly nothing but radicchio but that is truly what i crave you know it's easy to have on hand it stays just perfectly well for weeks at a time in your crisper drawer it's ready when you need it and then it just provides all the texture you could ever want really interesting flavor and it wants to soak up other flavors as well and really balance them out everything in there honestly like there's a lot of flavor and there's a lot of texture happening with every single element but put them all together it's just delicious all right now i just want to redo the recipe with an apron that doesn't have a stain onif you want to break a couple of them apart like that's fine i prefer to just like leave the leaves a little bit more whole and then eat my salads with like a knife and fork but then again i eat pizza with a knife and fork so it's not really saying much i draw the line at burgers this recipe for this salad came out of a desire to kind of showcase like how i like making salads in winter cold weather and winter is about like anything but lettuce and there's so many other things that make for great salads during that cold weather season radicchio is kind of top of the list for me it's in the chicory family they are this wonderful family of very assertively flavored um leafy veg anything i think you know that lettuce can do radicchio can do better i have to say hazelnut is my favorite nut i like dye for hazelnut almonds are good too i celebrate the walnut pistachio i mean sure nothing to sniff out but i'm sorry like cashews i just don't think they're that good like you like they're not does anybody like want to die for a cashew no all right so these are going in the oven and we're gonna forget about it okay it's gonna be about seven to ten minutes something in that range for 350 degrees when you apply heat to it you are changing the fats you are developing flavors you know you are unlocking aromatic compounds there's just so many different things that go into those processes and so much flavor becomes accessible when you do that this is at about eight or nine minutes those look great i mean it's just like a whole order of magnitude darker but i think we're still on the right side of the line you know i think like five more minutes and they'd be a little bit too much kind of like um you know kind of accurate bitterness but this looks great to me oh yeah this guy let's do a demo if you're toasting nuts in a skillet all the heat is coming from the bottom of that pan pretty much right so your contact area is actually very very very small so what that means is you have nuts that are very unevenly toasted you will never i repeat never get nuts like this okay if you toast them dry in a skillet doing them in the oven low and slow it really just roasts them throughout how do you turn salad into dinner more or less you need a little bit of protein you need a little bit of like you know kind of texture and a couple things going on for it to really feel like a meal i find that the black quinoa has like the most texture to it and the most kind of pronounced nutty kind of grassy flavor i'm going to grab you know a pot of water and then we're going to cook this quinoa like pasta when i say cook it like pasta i mean an excess of water once it's boiling the grain is going to go in it's going to simmer until it's al dente or tender and then all the water is going to be drained out and i'm going to return it to the pot just to kind of let it steam out a little bit of the excess liquid at that point i want fluffy distinct grains that are going to separate that are going to disperse throughout whatever i'm throwing them into good amount of salt and then quinoa is going to go right in we can leave it uncovered just so you're looking at it making eye contact with it not forgetting about it and just walking away so let's see what's happening with this here quinoa all right this is looking good here's what we're going to do we're going to drain it i want to take out as much of this water as possible you're going to get these like you know these loose you know kind of germs kind of coming off of the uh the quinoa and that's what you're looking for so now off heat i'm going to cover it a little bit extra moisture is going to steam out of that quinoa i'm just going to kind of pour it off when i go to use it in a few minutes all right spicy things and sweet things you know very often can go together especially in savory culinary applications i'm gonna do a couple tablespoons of honey i'm just gonna thin this out with a little bit of water i just don't want it to start to burn so we've got um gochugaru and aleppo as our mild crushed red pepper flakes here gochugaru you know korean chili flakes just a wonderful addition to your pantry because they're relatively mild they have an almost inherent sweetness to them so i'm just going to bring this to a really quick simmer over on the stove and that's just going to bloom the flavor of the chili all right so we just brought it to a quick simmer quick little infusion it also just dissolves the honey a little bit so that it's going to disperse nicely through our dressing so i'm going to throw in our olive oil and then rice vinegar there's a lot of flavors going on in there but until you put a pretty decent amount of salt in there it's not really even going to taste like much with the salt in there everything's just like turned up it's like wanting to catch in the back of my throat just a little bit more it's really nice being able to build a salad in a bowl and be able to kind of manipulate a little bit does wonders you want to you know get each leaf coated with the right amount of dressing you want to season by dispersing you know salt whatever else you know across like as much of the surface areas you can the way these sort of petals the way these leaves are arranged is sort of in these like concentric rings right so if you kind of just like find the edge sort of pull the leaf apart um you can just sort of like work your way around and not necessarily tear them all when it comes to radicchio one type is great two types is better three types i feel like makes you an all-star and so fun i'm just breaking up some of this treviso i'm gonna throw some of this quinoa in here i'm gonna put in some dressing now this dressing has been seasoned up with just with salt you know i'm gonna bump up like a little extra um salt in here you need to be tasting as you go always you know see is the amount of dressing enough you know don't use it all right away use about half see where you're at the salt is there all right ready to take this to the platter sometimes i like just honestly use my hands for this stage after i'm done but i just find like all those different shades of radicchio all the color all the textures all the different flavors just so fun like a little like extra scatter quinoa just make sure you've got enough in there a little final drizzle of dressing you know hazelnuts like you can chop them you know when they're this toasty and crunchy you can just kind of crush them with the flat of your hand you know you can't do that with an under toasted nut or god help me a cashew especially a raw one this is cotija um it's just a really lovely salty kind of funky cheese from mexico and some cilantro there we go first i want to like taste a piece of costal franco there's like this warmth to it that's amplified by the hot honey vinaigrette like if you're hesitant you know hearing that title and thinking that it's going to be like overtly spicy it's really not and i get a lot of flack at home for creating salads that are frankly nothing but radicchio but that is truly what i crave you know it's easy to have on hand it stays just perfectly well for weeks at a time in your crisper drawer it's ready when you need it and then it just provides all the texture you could ever want really interesting flavor and it wants to soak up other flavors as well and really balance them out everything in there honestly like there's a lot of flavor and there's a lot of texture happening with every single element but put them all together it's just delicious all right now i just want to redo the recipe with an apron that doesn't have a stain on\n"