Irreverent But Respectably Autumnal Salads

An unpredictable kale salad full of pickled things, cheddar, and roasted squash. Blithely nonconformist skillet-roasted radicchio wedges with melted Taleggio cheese and prosciutto.

You can casually toss the Pickled Things and Cheddar Salad with Roasted Delicata Squash or make it a composed platter, as illustrated in the recipe below.

A COMPLETE STRANGER WROTE TO ME recently to inform me that, among other things, I am “too unpredictable.” Even though she’d taken the time to offer me this free negative appraisal of my personality, I never got around to responding. But I should have thanked her, because I found it so flattering.

Calling someone or something “predictable” is a common critique (which I also received recently, from a food writer, who sent me a note to tell me she didn’t like my newsletter because I wasn’t doing anything new.)

Skillet Roasted Radicchio Wedges with Taleggio, Prosciutto, and Pickled Grapes; put it on a plate or eat it straight out of the skillet.

So how could being seen as the opposite— unpredictable—be anything other than absolutely delightful? I may get T-shirts made.

Unfortunately, I can’t claim that unpredictability is always an outright asset. Nobody wants an unpredictable brain surgeon or an unpredictable dam operator. But I have noticed that in literature—even though it’s not represented on the same sweeping fatal-flaw scale as jealousy, pride, or ambition—unpredictability is often what pushes the story forward.

For the Pickled Things and Cheddar Salad with Roasted Delicata Squash, we made our pickled grapes and fennel; we bought the pickled beans and carrots.

In real life, too. If not for the wild cards, loose cannons, free spirits, and dreamers of this insane, gorgeous, heartbreaking world, we might still light our houses with whale oil lamps, have voting boxes reserved for an exclusive few, insist that women cover their ankles, and maintain that Earth is a flat wafer, around which the sun revolves. Our interstates might be clogged with covered wagons.

We might even insist that autumn salads absolutely must be loaded with mandatory cucurbits, apples, and pears, candied nuts and dried fruit, blue cheese, and sweet maple-syrup-spiked dressing—just because that’s the way we’ve always done it.

You’re going to use beautiful radicchio and pickled grapes in both of today’s recipes. LUCKY YOU!

Please don’t get me wrong—I love that glorious salad madly. It’s a classic for a reason.

But I don’t think that this world has ever been improved by sitting still (or, worse, going backward). Nor have salads.