Photograph by Camila Falquez food styling by Maggie Ruggiero  Prop Styling by Amy Wilson

Photograph by Camila Falquez food styling by Maggie Ruggiero  Prop Styling by Amy Wilson

Sofia Coppola

Blushy Radicchio Salad

Starters from Issue 11 – Summer 2017 – Heroines

With their soft-focus color palettes, reliance on natural light, and floaty camerawork, Sofia Coppola’s films are lovingly rendered celluloid dreamscapes. And her characters, they of the perpetual longing (and propensity for contemplative staring out of windows) mirror her distinctly beautiful visual aesthetic. In this cine-poet’s hushed color spectrum, pink looms large, so, for our Coppola tribute, pink, it had to be; ours, a salad of blushy, rippled radicchio drizzled with a delicate blue cheese dressing.

serves 4

1 small garlic clove
¼ cup fresh-squeezed pink grapefruit juice
2 tsp red wine vinegar
4 oz blue cheese (we like Bayley Hazen)
2 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 to 4 heads radicchio del Veneto, or other radicchio
½ cup raw almonds toasted and coarsely chopped

1
Chop garlic with a pinch of coarse salt until thoroughly minced. Transfer to a small bowl along with grapefruit juice and vinegar. Let stand 10 minutes. Add cheese and mash with a fork into a chunky, thick dressing. Gradually stir in olive oil until combined.
2
Just before serving, cut the core from each head of radicchio, and separate leaves, tearing if too large. Toss thoroughly with dressing to coat. Scatter with almonds and finish with a few grinds of black pepper.