ECCOLO CHOPPED SALAD

It’s a wonderful, interesting salad. Super delicious and nutritious, too. Good and good for you, especially with the farro. It became one of our most popular dishes at Eccolo, my Berkeley restaurant. I’ve had other restaurateurs ask to buy the recipe from me. To this day, people stop me on the street and shower their praises on the salad. In Manhattan, a colleague introduced me to his friend from Berkeley, a woman who knew Eccolo – “Oh, that chopped salad.” Sheesh! Who knew? Forty years of French cooking, and it’s the chopped salad people remember.

Eccolo served classic Italian pastas and a few other old-school rotisserie perfections, including buttermilk-roasted chicken and porchetta. When we were putting the restaurant together, I swore I’d never serve hamburgers, chocolate cake, or Coca-Cola. In the early days when we were trying to boost our lunch sales, Lori, one of our terrific sous chefs, suggested we serve the American classic, Cobb Salad. Horrified at the idea, I ask for other ideas, pointing out that Cobb Salad wasn’t Italian in any way. She suggested an Italian-ized version of a chopped salad, which I agreed to, without knowing what it might be. The next day we put it on the menu and sold 40 orders. It never left the menu. Eventually, our three best sellers were hamburgers, chocolate cake, and … chopped salad. This reality was, to me, deeply disturbing. Our “Italian authenticity” had gone down the drain, but these three dishes helped keep the restaurant filled.

A wonderful aspect of this salad is its seasonality: the fruits changes as their seasonal availability changes, determining the ever-changing character of the salad. For example, in the fall, one can prepare it with persimmons and pomegranate, as in this recipe. In winter, apples, pears, and citrus become the sweetness and crunch. In summer, berries begin to appear continue until fall. Ever adaptable, the salad can be made more substantial by tossing in sliced chicken breast or grilled steak. For me, fish just doesn’t work.

Dressing:
3 TBL red wine vinegar
4 TBL olive oil
½ shallot, peeled, diced
¼ tsp salt
¼ tsp freshly ground Tellicherry pepper

Salad:
½ cup diced Red Verona radicchio
½ cup diced romaine lettuce
½ cup diced heart of celery
½ cup pomegranate seeds, about ½ pomegranate
½ cup peeled, diced Fuyu persimmon
½ cup pinenuts, lightly toasted
½ cubed avocado
¼ cup peeled, diced red onion
2 TBL blue cheese, crumbled with a fork
Optional: ½ cup cooked farro

Whisk all ingredients for the dressing together and macerate for 15 mins. Combine radicchio, lettuce, celery, scallions in a mixing bowl. Add ½ the dressing and toss. Add pomegranate seeds, persimmon, pinenuts, avocado, and bleu cheese. Add remaining dressing toss gently until cheese and avocado just start to blend. Serve in a pile on the plate. If you’re using farro, add with the pomegranate seeds and persimmon.

N.B. It’s important the avocado and the cheese are tossed gently and not smeared into the salad or incorporated into the dressing. The dressing is a vinaigrette, not a blue cheese or avocado dressing made ahead. Tossed in, the blue cheese becomes a pointillistic element in the salad rather than a continuous, masking flavor.