I’m so excited, I’ve wanted to do a post for Bastille Day (July 14th) since starting this blog but have never gotten it together until this year.
It’s sort of ironic considering this is the first year I’ve had a little Sous Chef with serious FOMO and no desire to sleep unless she is in a moving stroller or is being carried by someone who is acting like a moving stroller (I therefore have an 80s suntan and a sore back, neither of which I want to talk about).
You will not really find this salad in Vietnam. This is the salad I wished was in Vietnam after I ate a bad grilled banana dessert and decided I would probably never eat (or travel) again. SOmething fresh and living and low on the food poisoning possibility scale.
I love Vietnamese food (and Vietnam! And the Vietnamese! So much!). I love the large amounts of greens and herbs and general freshness. I love how light and clean it all tastes. There would likely be ground pork and lots of fish sauce in this if it was more authentically Vietnamese, but this salad is just inspired by what I love about Vietnamese food.
I am in the land of avocados, grapefruit and sunburns. I don’t even remember what rain feels like and we have been eating the freshest, most delicious produce and absolutely nothing that is reminiscent of our long chilly winter. Our little one felt weather-induced sweat for the first time (infant sweaty hair is the cutest) and the palm trees are waving to us like ‘welcome, we didn’t think you were going to make it this year!’ we weren’t sure either but we did, and does it ever feel good!
Whenever we have a kitchen on a vacation, I try to shoot a blog while we’re there because I find more culinary inspiration on vacation than any other time. So, I literally shot this yesterday while my little slept on her Dad and then we enjoyed it with some fresh grapefruit and then again for dinner drizzled on more avocados with some tomatoes, greens and roasted asparagus. Vacation should always taste this good.
My obsession with radicchio doesn’t appear to be going anywhere. Luckily, although she turns the colour of of one when she’s mad, my baby didn’t come out an actual radicchio, despite the amount that I ate while pregnant.
Besides its fresh, subtle bitterness, crisp lettuce-y texture and nostalgia it brings for the outdoor markets on the cobblestones of Rome, there’s another reason that we eat a lot of it in our house. It’s the same reason that versions of this salad and this salad happen an awful lot at our place too. Radicchio, despite its fragile-seeming texture, is robust and lasts for quite a while in your fridge.
