Since I’m a month and a half behind on my blogging, I make no pretense about maintaining chronological order — this is Catch-Up time!

This first post is about two lunches this week, featuring a white wine from Piedmont, a gift from my good friend, Gemma, a wine importer and distributor in Massachusetts.

Yesterday’s lunch was a simple salad of grilled octopus, served on a bed of Castelfranco Radicchio, a delightful heirloom Italian vegetable, and accompanied by chunks of sweet Piquillo peppers, imported from Peru.

We had already tasted this wine earlier in the week, first with a spinach gnocchi and vegetables dish, and then with some grilled swordfish for dinner.

But it was with the two salads that Erbaluce di Caluso really shone. The bitterness of the radicchio somehow matched beautifully with the acidic herbaceous qualities of the wine. It worked equally well today with my eclectic salad — sautéed Tatsoi, julienned raw beet, and Ricotta Salata. I also made a batch of Caponata yesterday, and that completed the lunch today nicely.

Thank you, Gemma.