A simple salad like this one, from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: 30th Anniversary Edition, requires the freshest, best-quality ingredients you can find. She says: "The ideal components of this salad are long Treviso radicchio, and fresh cranberry beans, but there are satisfactory substitutes for either or both. Instead of Treviso radicchio you can use the more common round one, or even Belgian endive, which is part of the same family. Instead of fresh beans you can use the dried, and if you can’t find either fresh or dried cranberry beans, you can turn to dried cannellini beans."

• 2 pounds fresh Cranberry beans, or 1 cup dried Rancho Gordo Cranberry or Marcella beans, soaked and cooked
• 1 pound radicchio, either the long-leaf Treviso variety or the round head, or Belgian endive
• Salt
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Choice quality red wine vinegar
• Black pepper, ground fresh from the mill
  

Makes 4 to 6 servings

1. If using fresh beans: Shell them, put them in a pot with enough cold, unsalted water to cover by about 2 inches, bring the water to a gentle simmer, cover the pot, and cook at a slow, steady pace until tender, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Time their preparation so they will still be warm when assembling the salad.
2. If using dried beans: Time their cooking so that they are still warm when you put together the salad.
3. If using radicchio: Detach the leaves from the head, discarding any blemished ones, shred them into narrow strips about ¼ inch wide, soak in cold water for a few minutes, drain, and either spin-dry or shake dry in a towel.
4. If using endive: Discard any blemished leaves, take a thin slice off the root end, then cut it across into strips ¼ inch wide, washing it and drying it as described above.
   Drain the beans and put them, while they are still warm, into a serving bowl with the
   radicchio or endive. Add salt, toss once, pour in enough oil to coat well, add a dash of vinegar, liberal grindings of black pepper, toss thoroughly, and serve at once.
   

From Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking: 30th  Anniversary Edition by Marcella Hazan. Copyright © 1992 by Marcella Hazan. Foreword copyright © 2022 by Victor Hazan. Excerpted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All
rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.