Potato Gnocchi with Radicchio Pesto Recipe

If radicchio has crept onto more restaurant menus and farmers’ market tables in recent years, you can trace much of that momentum back to Lane Selman. An agricultural research professor at Oregon State University and a dual American-Italian citizen with Sicilian roots, Selman founded the Culinary Breeding Network in 2012. The community-driven initiative connects plant breeders, farmers, chefs, and home gardeners to develop and promote diverse varieties of vegetables, grains, and fruits that maximize flavor and nutrition. The network is perhaps best known for its joyful, Italian-inspired sagre—harvest festivals like the Sagra del Radicchio—that have helped turn a once-obscure bitter green into a cult favorite.

Now Selman has teamed up with writer Margarett Waterbury—an award-winning food and drinks journalist and former managing editor of Edible Portland—for the definitive volume on this leafy vegetable. Due from Timber Press this September, Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable makes a persuasive case for this cultivated form of chicory, introducing us to a a broad family of forms, colors, textures, and uses.

Together, in this colorful edition, which feels as much like a coffee table book as a it does a cookbook, Selman and Waterbury follow radicchio from its Italian roots to fields and restaurant kitchens in the Pacific Northwest, gathering recipes from chefs, farmers, and nonnas on both sides of the Atlantic for a collection of dishes that put radicchio to work in pasta, rice, polenta, pizza, with protein, in salads, preserved, and even in sweets.

The recipe that follows is a taste of that exuberance: pillowy gnocchi tossed in a pesto that turns radicchio’s signature bitterness into something rich, savory, and deeply satisfying—proof, as Selman might put it, that this misunderstood chicory deserves a place at your table.

On August 30, the Culinary Breeding Network and Glynwood Center for Regional Food and Farming will team up to host The Variety Showcase, where chefs will collaborate directly with plant breeders and farmers to create dishes featuring new and emerging vegetable, grain, and fruit varieties. Facilitating a conversation around climate resilience, culinary quality, nutrition, biodiversity, cultural heritage, and seed sovereignty, this event is aimed at everyone from farmers and seed growers to chefs and home cooks, retailers, distributors, and curious eaters. This public tasting and community-building event will take place at Glynwood in Cold Spring on August 30, 3-7 p.m.

Luigina “Gigia” Prataviera

Potato Gnocchi with Radicchio Pesto

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Servings: 4

Traditional pesto alla Genovese puts aromatic basil front and center. This earthier, wintrier version is a great swap when supermarket basil looks too sad and fresh greens from the garden are a distant dream. It’s not as perfumed as the Genovese—and, truth be told, not quite as pretty either—but what it lacks in visual appeal it makes up for with richness and comfort. Try this pesto on dry pasta shapes with lots of nooks and crannies, such as gemelli or orecchiette, or use it to liven up a bowl of simple beans. Or do like Gigia Prataviera does and spread it on seedy crackers for antipasto or toss it with tender potato gnocchi. You can use almost any radicchio here, but taste it first. If it’s very bitter, you may want to soak the leaves in cold water for half an hour or so beforehand. Baking the potatoes for the gnocchi helps reduce their moisture content, as does spreading out the riced potatoes to steam for a few minutes before adding flour. You can use russets or storage potatoes with set skins, but don’t use new potatoes—they have too much moisture. Serves 4 to 6, makes 1 1/2 cups pesto, enough to dress a pound of pasta with a little left over.

Ingredients Method

Ingredients

  

For the gnocchi

• 2 pounds russet or boiling potatoes
• 1½ cups all-purpose flour plus more as needed
• Radicchio Pesto recipe follows
• 1 to 2 tablespoons butter for serving (optional but recommended

For the pesto

• 4 cups roughly chopped
• Chioggia Lusia, or any dense-headed type radicchio
• 1 garlic clove roughly chopped
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 2 tablespoons chopped blanched almonds
• Salt
• ⅓ cup extra virgin olive oil plus 1 to 2 tablespoons, if needed
• ¾ cup freshly grated Grana Padano or Parmigiano-Reggiano about 2.25 ounces, plus more for serving

Method

 

TO MAKE THE GNOCCHI

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F.
2. Scrub the potatoes, and then poke them all over with a fork. Bake them directly on the oven rack until they are completely cooked, 1 hour or more, depending on their size.
3. Remove the potatoes from the oven, and while they’re still hot, cut them in half and scoop out the flesh into a potato ricer or a food mill fitted with the finest disc. Rice the potatoes into a fluffy mound directly onto your work surface or into a large, shallow bowl. Let the potatoes rest until they stop steaming but are still warm.
4. Sprinkle 1 1/2 cups of flour over the potatoes. Gently mix it in using a fork, transitioning to using your hands once the flour is mostly moistened. Knead the dough gently until it comes together in a smooth, pliable mass, but don’t over-knead. Your goal is to keep the gnocchi tender. If the dough sticks to your hands, add a tablespoon of flour at a time until the mixture’s surface is soft and supple.
5. Divide the dough into four pieces. Use your hands to roll one piece at a time into a rope about 1 inch thick, and then cut it into 3/4-inch pieces.
6. To shape the gnocchi, you’ll need a floured fork or gnocchi board (a small, ridged board called a rigagnocchi). If using a fork, gently press one cut side of each gnocco against the concave side of the tines near the tips. Using your index finger, lightly roll it down the tines toward the handle, creating ridges on the now-convex side. (It’s not strictly necessary to shape the gnocchi in this way—you can just cook them shaped like little pillows—but the ridges hold onto the sauce.)
7. Bring a 4- to 6-quart pot of salted water to a gentle boil. Add the pesto (recipe follows) and the optional butter to a heatproof bowl. Rest that on top of your pot of water as it comes to a boil to heat the bowl, pesto, and butter. Once the water starts to boil, remove the bowl (carefully, it will be hot). Gently drop the gnocchi into the water and cook until they float to the surface.
8. Because gnocchi are so delicate, pouring them into a colander to drain can crush them. Instead, skim them out of the water with a spider strainer or slotted spoon, and transfer them to the warmed bowl with the pesto. Toss, adding a little pasta cooking water if necessary, and serve with additional grated cheese at the table.

TO MAKE THE PESTO

1. Pulse the radicchio, garlic, pine nuts, almonds, and a big pinch of salt in a food processor to a chunky, paste-like consistency. You still want plenty of texture at this stage. With the machine running, slowly pour in the olive oil. Scrape down the sides, add the grated cheese, and pulse just to combine. Taste for salt. If the pesto seems too thick, add another tablespoon or two of olive oil.
2. You can make the pesto ahead and store it in the refrigerator for up to five days. Keep it in a sealed container or press a piece of plastic wrap to the surface so it doesn’t dry out.

Recipe and photos taken from Radicchio © Copyright 2026 by Lane Selman and Margarett Waterbury, photographs by Shawn Linehan. Published by Timber Press, Portland, OR. Used by permission of the publisher. All rights reserved.