Pink pasta with radicchio, walnuts and herbs

I’m asking you to cook pink lettuce

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Do we even mention it? Is it even still a thing? A quick poll of my friends says no (or almost no). A few buy or receive a flower, a couple get a card but for most, it passes with a kiss and a morning greeting.

The last couple of years I’ve fallen back in love with the idea of Valentine's Day thanks to radicchio*. Pink lettuce over a bunch of sprayed roses for me any day of the week.

Radicchio, to me, is romance. It's the culinary equivalent of a frill on a Molly Goddard dress. Delicate shades of pink and deep purply red. My favourites are the petals of the blush pink radicchio and the cream and scarlet splatter of Castellfranco.

The one we all know best is the deep purple one - Radicchio di Chioggia - I first came across it ripped ungenerously into little pieces in bags of floret salad in the 90’s. I hated it then. It was (to my kids' palette) bitter and gross and often paired with other similarly bitter leaves like escarole that itched my throat and I could not understand. Bitterness is not a favourite flavour of the under 12s.

The key to cooking with radicchio, which is by its glorious nature a proudly bitter leaf (and in fact any bitter flavour) is to balance it out, if I’d have known to put a slightly sweet and acidic dressing on that bag of bitter floret salad I’m sure I might have liked it more.

This pasta is something I have honed making it over years and years and is how I like to eat it. Two easy but super flavourful and very colourful things are stirred through the pasta.

First a quick pesto like green sauce made from oregano or marjoram (though thyme would work too), parsley, walnuts and parm. This comes together with the cooking water to make a spoonable creamy sauce. You could stop here and it would be delicious.

But we’d have missed the point of this recipe. Second comes the radicchio. The radicchio is torn into bite-sized pieces and tossed with balsamic, honey, chilli and orange dressing (that is also a very good dressing for grilled radicchio). The dressed bright leaves are tossed through the pasta with the herb sauce and the radicchio softens just a little but keeps its brightness.

It’s a recipe I’ve been making for years but this winter I’ve been adding chickpeas too. The creaminess of the chickpeas works so well with the chew of the pasta, the bitter-sweet radicchio and the oregano. And also in a very 2025 energy they add protein (I’m not counting).

If you can’t get radicchio then Chicory (red or white) would be the first thing I would use as a replacement. Cavolo nero, kale, rocket or watercress would work instead too. Essentially any leaf with a bit of flavour.

Make a bowl of pasta but make it pink.

Anna x

*(and not least the ‘radicchio not roses’ campaign from Natoora - supplier of flavourful fruit and veg). I’ll take a pink lettuce over a bunch of sprayed roses any day of the week.

Pink pasta with radicchio, walnuts and herbs

This is as offbeat as pasta recipes get, but it is one of my favourites. It hits all the flavour and texture notes and looks a picture.