Puntarelle alla romana recipe: Rome's winter salad

Puntarelle alla romana is Rome's winter salad: curled strips of Catalonian chicory in an anchovy-garlic dressing, found on nearly every trattoria menu in the city from October to March.

The vegetable itself is the inner shoots of a chicory variety grown mainly around Rome and in Puglia. Cut raw, the strips are straight and faintly bitter. Soaked in ice water, they curl into tight corkscrews within the hour, which is why the dish looks the way it does before a knife touches the anchovies.

None of this is complicated, but the order of operations matters more than usual: curl first, dress last, and don't let the two steps run into each other.

Curl first, dress last — the order is the whole recipe.

Ingredients

• 1 large head puntarelle (about 500 g)
• 4-5 anchovy fillets in oil
• 1 garlic clove
• 2 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 100 ml extra virgin olive oil
• Salt and black pepper, to taste

Method

1. Pull the pale, firm inner shoots away from the tough outer leaves of the puntarelle head, discarding the leaves or saving them for soup.
2. Cut each shoot lengthwise into thin strips, roughly matchstick width — the thinner the cut, the tighter the curl later on.
3. Drop the strips into a large bowl of ice water and leave for at least 30 minutes, up to 2 hours. The cold water pulls the strips into curls and crisps them; this step is as much the point of the dish as the dressing.
4. Drain and dry the curled puntarelle thoroughly in a salad spinner or clean towel — leftover water dilutes the dressing and the whole plate turns watery.
5. Mash the anchovy fillets and garlic together into a rough paste with the flat of a knife, or in a mortar.
6. Whisk the anchovy-garlic paste with the vinegar and lemon juice, then add the olive oil in a slow stream, whisking until it loosely emulsifies. Add pepper; taste before adding salt, since the anchovies carry most of it already.
7. Toss the puntarelle with the dressing only right before serving. Oil wilts the curls within minutes, and the crunch is non-negotiable.

A Frascati pairing, and a milder dressing

Frascati, the crisp white grown in the hills just outside Rome, is the standard pour with puntarelle — its acidity cuts through the anchovy without fighting the bitterness of the chicory.

For a milder dressing, rub the garlic clove around the inside of the serving bowl instead of mashing it in, or leave it whole in the dressing and fish it out before tossing. Puntarelle itself is in season from October through March, so this is a dish for the colder half of the year, not a summer salad standing in for one. It's a fixture of what to eat in Rome in winter, usually served before a plate of carbonara rather than after it.

Can puntarelle be prepared ahead? Cut and curl the strips up to a day ahead and keep them in the fridge, still in their water; make the dressing and toss only right before serving, or the salad loses its crunch.