What We’re Cooking This Week: Radicchio Salad with Pear and Pecorino

Wellspent Market founder Jim Dixon has been writing about food and restaurants for Willamette Week for a long time. He wants our readers to eat well, and he shows them how with the recipes he creates just for us by using simple cooking techniques and easy-to-find ingredients.

We live in what the chicory cognoscenti call the Veneto of North America, an analogy that requires a footnote: It’s about how the Pacific Northwest and the province in northeastern Italy are good places to grow radicchio, but, more specifically, it’s about how local farmers have embraced the bitter and spectacularly colored leafy vegetable.

Portland’s own Lane Selman deserves most of the credit. A professor of practice at Oregon State University, Selman created the Culinary Breeding Network, a loose-knit group of plant breeders, farmers, cooks and people who love to eat. The breeders develop vegetables that small farmers can grow profitably, while the cooks and eaters show the rest of us how to make them delicious.

For more than a decade Selman and her motley crew of chicory evangelists (“Radicchio Fever,” WW, Sept. 16, 2026) talked up radicchio to anyone who’d listen, and now you can buy it just about everywhere. Farmers markets and better produce departments often stock several varieties, from the familiar red balls of Chioggia to the shocking pink, loose-leafed Rosa del Veneto to the pale green, red-freckled Castelfranco.

And while most radicchio lives up to its “bitter is better” tagline, in general, the lighter colored varieties aren’t quite so puckery. If you like, you can tame that bitterness a bit by soaking the cut leaves in cold water for at least 30 minutes. The slightly creamy, Caesar-like dressing in this recipe offsets the bitterness, too, as do the sweet pear and salty cheese.

Recipe

• 2 tablespoons mayonnaise
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder (or 2 cloves fresh garlic, finely chopped)
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• 1 teaspoon fish sauce (or 2 anchovies, finely chopped)
• ¼ teaspoon kosher-style sea salt
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• About 3 cups chopped radicchio, preferably a mix of varieties
• 2 Bosc pears, cored, sliced and cut into bite-sized pieces
• 1–2 ounces Pecorino Romano cheese (about ¼ cup) finely grated
• Croutons, optional

Make the dressing first in the bottom of the salad bowl by mixing the mayo with the garlic powder, vinegar, fish sauce, salt and pepper. Once it’s well mixed, stir in the olive oil.

Add the radicchio and pears to the bowl and toss well. Top with the granted cheese and croutons if using.