Rachel Roddy’s puntarelle, radicchio, celery, apple and cheese salad recipe

Rachel Roddy offers a puntarelle, radicchio, celery, apple and cheese salad as “this week’s recipe” and as a way to remember Charlie Hicks. Roddy recalls Charlie Hicks from Veg Talk, a weekly show that ran on Radio 4 from 1998 to 2005; the programme, she says, came into being after Sheila Dillon interviewed Charlie for The Food Programme.

Veg Talk featured a market report by Charlie, a “vegetable of the week” and studio guests, and Roddy remembers his knowledge, humour and warm voice. Roddy also remembers the late cooking teacher and gardener Carla Tomasi in Rome and the restaurant Frith’s in Soho, where Charlie supplied bitter greens and items such as puntarelle.

Puntarelle, or cicoria di catalogna, is described as a member of the chicory family that looks, at first glance, like an elongated head of lettuce with dark serrated outer leaves and a cluster of pale green, succulent hollow tubes; the inner tubes are used curled in cold water and, Roman-style, dressed with anchovy, garlic, olive oil and either lemon or vinegar.

The recipe’s ingredients listed are: 1 head puntarelle or frisée, 1 small head radicchio, 2 celery stalks, 1 crisp red apple, ½ lemon, 100g cheese (pecorino, grana padano, asiago or manchego), 6 tbsp olive oil, 1 tbsp red‑wine vinegar, 2 tsp runny honey, a pinch of salt and 100g walnut halves.

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