WHEN WAS THE last time you made room in your vegetable garden for something a little out of the ordinary that you’d never grown or maybe even tasted before?

I don’t know of anyone who speaks out more passionately or eloquently in behalf of exceptional vegetable varieties than Lane Selman, who’s introduced an ever-widening audience—myself among them—to many of her favorites over the years, like distinctive peppers and an expanded palate of winter crops, including a delicious diversity of radicchio.

Now Lane has a cookbook coming out in September, too, called “Radicchio: A Celebration of the Beloved Italian Vegetable” (affiliate link), about a crop many Americans didn’t know much about not so long ago, but do now, partly thanks to her.

Whether in her work as a professor of practice at Oregon State University and the Culinary Breeding Network that she founded in 2012, or through the popular celebratory event she organizes to showcase standout organic varieties, Lane Selman brings stakeholders together to collaborate—plant breeders, chefs, farmers, and even just us eaters—in the name of educating all involved and improving quality in vegetables, fruits, and grains.

She’s co-hosting an event Aug. 30th in Cold Spring, N.Y., and another Oct. 24th in Portland, Ore., that I’m looking forward to hearing more about, too, besides that upcoming cookbook.

Read along as you listen to the Aug. 10, 2026 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on Apple Podcasts (iTunes) or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).

(Photo of Lane Selman, below, by Josh Volk.)

radicchio and more, with lane selman

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Margaret Roach: So welcome back, Lane. I’m assuming you’re still eating vegetables [laughter].

Lane Selman: I am. I am. And right now it’s a fantastic time. There’s so much variety.

Margaret: Well, I have to ask you—tell the truth now—was there ever a vegetable you met that you didn’t like? Because you seem to really be so open to diversity, to trying things and exploring.

Lane: You’re not going to make me fess up to my… Well, I think I like all vegetables. Probably my least favorite actually is the green bean [laughter].

Margaret: Oh, really? That’s one of my favorites. Oh, interesting. I know.

Lane: I like it. I just don’t like it when it’s undercooked. I cook them at home. I like Romano beans a lot.

Margaret: Me, too.

Lane: Yeah. But there can just be a lot of preparations when I don’t like green beans, but when they are prepared in a way that I like, then I love them.

Margaret: Interesting.

Lane: I’m going to get a reputation for bitter vegetables, but I am working with bitter melons now with a group of breeders at Cornell, and those are an acquired taste.  And this is a project called Breaking Vegetable Boundaries, and it’s really trying to create new varieties, new vegetables really that don’t exist as far as a grocery store is concerned.

So the ‘Rosé’ cabbage, which is a cabbage that you will see if you come to the variety showcase event that you mentioned at the beginning in Cold Spring, N.Y., at Glynwood on Aug. 30th, there’ll be a table that features this really beautiful, round, smooth, kind of pinkish-lavender cabbage. It’s absolutely delicious. It has a wonderful texture. So that’s something that doesn’t really exist right now in a grocery store, or even at farmer’s market; it’s not there. So this is something very new.

We have the bitter… I’m calling them bitter gourds; a lot of people call them bitter melons, but because we also work with these cucumber melons, which are like carosellos and other cucumbers which are actually an immature melon rather than a cucumber. And so it’s these two breeders, Michael Mazourek and Philip Griffiths at Cornell, that are breeding new categories, new novel crosses of vegetables that really don’t let yet exist.

And the bitter gourds are very drought tolerant and they’re Michael Mazourek is selecting for them to be less bitter for more acceptance to an American audience.

Margaret: But it’s like a side dish or a part of, it’s a savory. It’s not something sweet like melon, the melon word.

Lane: Yes. It is very popular in a lot of countries in Asia and in Africa. It is oftentimes utilized with pork, something fatty, to kind of cut that bitterness, which we’ll probably get to talking about when we talk about radicchio. But I feel like I’m getting a reputation now. But people that love bitter – Yeah,

Margaret: She’s such a bitter person, that Lane Selman, she’s so bitter. [Laughter.]

Lane: I know. People that love it, love it. I think that’s something that this has in common, is people become kind of obsessed with these little bit underdog vegetables.

Margaret: But the thing—and again, we’ll talk more about radicchio and talk about the cookbook—but even with radicchio, first of all, they’re not all created equal in terms of their bitterness scale, so to speak. And even the same variety, different times I think in its season its flavor can be more or less pronounced. Do you know what I mean? I mean, to condemn something for, “Oh, I tried that once, forget it.” It’s just not-

Lane: Exactly. I mean like kale and collards, a lot of the Brassicas that we eat, when it gets cooler, they get less bitter; they get more sweet. And then also when you look at all the different varieties and types of the chicories, which Chicorium is the genus, the ones that are more green, yellow, rather than purple, are more mild as well.

But the one thing to know about radicchio is when you pick up a package of them, you will find that the days to maturity can vary wildly. They’re kind of split up into early-, mid-, and late-maturing. So you plant them all really all at the same time, which I’m in the Pacific Northwest, so I’ll just tell you about our timing. Our timing is we’re seeding mid-June, mid-July, and then after a month of having them in your flats, then you’re going to transplant them into your garden or into the field for a farm. And a month later you’re going to be transplanting them.

So no matter what the maturity is, so instead of successive planting where you’re planting and staggering it out, you’re actually planting them all at the same time and they mature at different rates. And so you can choose an early-season—so if you choose one that’s 60 days from transplant, then you’re going to be having your radicchio, let’s say, in October.

But those same types… Let’s talk about the round one that everyone sees at the grocery store, the round purple one that looks a little bit like a cabbage is called ‘Chioggia.’ And Chioggia is a place in Italy. They’re most often named after places that they’re from. And so Chioggia, you can get different varieties that are different. There’s one called ‘Etna’ that is a short season. And then there’s one called ‘Vesuvius,’ which is longer. And so the ones that take longer to grow, and then they’re starting to grow into cooler weather, those are the ones that are going to be less sweet. So we really do encourage people to eat radicchio, just like anything else, in its proper season, because that’s when it’s really going to shine.

Margaret: Yes. So right now, I mean, you’re in an area, the Pacific Northwest, so much is at the farmer’s markets right now, I’m sure. It must just be bounty, bounty, bounty. And so are there other things that you’re plugged into and you’re like, “Ooh, I can’t wait to get some fill-in-the-blank,” or that you’re growing yourself. I don’t know.” But are there other vegetables you want to sort of, or herbs or whatever that you want to put a word out for that you think are a little overlooked that people might want to give a try while we’re at this season of plenty?

Lane: During this planting time right now?

Margaret: No, for harvesting, for going and trying and putting on their menu, so to speak. Yeah.

Lane: Let me think.

Margaret: I think some of the unusual cucumbers, like you mentioned, for instance, the carousels are, some of those are really different. I mean, they really taste different.

Lane: They taste delicious. So in that same project, this breaking vegetable boundaries, I call it. There’s these carosello, and we talked about The Cucumber Shop. Jay Tracy is this fellow that has this seed company, and he has all these types of… they’re actually immature melons. So even though Armenian cucumber, which was like a really long, serpentine kind of cucumber, it is an immature melon. And also the carosello, they’re drier and they also have really lovely textures, I feel like. And I guess I don’t ever have a problem with burping, I guess, which people claim that they don’t do as much, but they have a very lovely flavor. And just within also traditional cucumbers, there are a lot of snacking cucumbers that are coming on the market that I’m really excited about that I like a lot. [Carosello photo, above, from The Cucumber Shop.]

Margaret: So that’s a part of the farmer’s market displays, because a lot of the specialty farmers, they try different varieties. They want to showcase diversity and beautiful things and new things. So it’s fun to try—and ask what the name is; ask them what the name is also.

Lane: Exactly. And I’ve been seeing a lot of amaranth, which has been interesting for the greens, which is called callaloo in a lot of places in the world. And I really love that. And people in Greece, you see it as horta. I feel like in a lot of different countries, they eat a lot of cooked amaranth greens that we don’t see a lot here, but I’ve been seeing that pop up a lot in markets, which has been cool. And there’s so many different types of amaranth, like leaves. There’s purple ones and green ones and super-beautiful.

Margaret: I’ve never tasted them. They’re beautiful. I mean, I’ve never tasted them. Oh, interesting. O.K.

Lane: Super-great. You can also eat the grain, and a lot of people are growing them for flowers, too.

Margaret: Yes. So “Radicchio,” as a collaborator with Margarett Waterbury, you’ve created this book and it’s coming out later in September and so forth. But it wasn’t enough to tell everybody about radicchio and get people excited and get some seed companies excited about having a supply of organic seed here for American gardeners and farmers and so forth: Now there’s a cookbook, too.

And I have to say [laughter], I was looking through an early copy. I mean, I had no idea about some of the classic recipes or some of the recipes in it—that it could be used even in sweet dishes, even in a chocolate radicchio cake with mascarpone frosting [below]. I had no idea about some of these things. Or making a pesto out of it and all of these possibilities from sweet to savory and so forth. So I guess in your many trips to Italy, you’ve probably tasted a lot of these in restaurants, these types of dishes.

Lane: Yes. And some of the recipes also, the dishes that you see in the book were actually photographed and prepared in Italy. So this whole book is more than, I mean, I know that it’s billed as a cookbook and it is a cookbook. It has 48 recipes, but it is a very thick cookbook, in that it’s almost 400 pages. It is like the radicchio tome.

It is a lot of information that I have learned along the way with others. And it’s just the culmination of all that because it was a kind of a difficult crop to understand and get the information. There just wasn’t information about all these different types, where they’re from, how they grow, good seed sources, all these things. So it’s been this long journey. And I always compare it to “Alice in Wonderland,” because I feel like I fell down a rabbit hole where I was just trying to find some new vegetables for farmers to grow and sell in the wintertime, and create a more local food market and demand in the wintertime so that farmers would have more things to sell and we would be eating local more year-round.

Margaret: Right, right. Because it is a winter vegetable in the sense that, like you were just talking about when you planted, for instance, in the Pacific Northwest, and then you’re harvesting it into December or whatever. It’s not a planted in April, harvested in July kind of a vegetable.

Lane: Exactly.

Margaret: So it’s a different season and it really can mean a very lovely, unusual, and desirable crop for those farmers and for those shoppers to enjoy.

Lane: Yes. And it’s an unknown vegetable for most Americans. And we mostly eat a salad here, which is fantastic and great, and they do consume it like that in Italy. But going to Italy and finding out more and more about this crop over the last 10 years, I’ve experienced it in a lot of ways. And you go to the Veneto region or anywhere in the north, really, in Italy in the wintertime, and it’s ubiquitous. It is always going to be every step of the way on a menu, it is going to be served, because it’s what they have and it was very appreciated there.

And so some of these—yes, the most interesting was the cake. In Chioggia, they have a traditional cake, and it was shocking to me. I went for the first time in 2014 when I saw that, I was with two farmers from here in Oregon, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I’ve got to taste this. I have to find this.” And so interesting.

So they use in liqueurs, they use it in… I’ve seen beer made with it with the root. They have everything from aperitivo at the beginning to all the way to the dessert, and everything in between. And so it also was this thing where it was like, I want people to know a lot about radicchio in general, but then I also think that it would be really fantastic for people to explore beyond making it or preparing it raw and eating it in some of these applications that you see in Italy.

Margaret: Yeah. Well, as I said, I mentioned the pesto, which is a really simple one. And I think it had garlic and pine nuts and almonds and salt and oil. And one of the cheeses, either Grana Padano or Parmigiano Reggiano, or I think maybe it was to fill gnocchi or worked in I can’t remember what-

Lane: Yeah, it was a pesto that she put on top of gnocchi.

Margaret: Oh, she put it on top of it. It wasn’t a stuffed sort of a thing or rolled in. O.K.

Lane: Exactly. So you put it on crackers. That was my friend Davide, who is from Italy and who’s helped with… He was a farmer and worked with a lot of farmers that grew radicchio. And it was his nonna who gave us that. We went to her home. She was so excited and she made that dish for us, which was so lovely. And everything is quite simple, really.

Margaret: And when you think about also think about what many of the radicchios look like, and they have vivid coloration, many of them. And when we think about vivid coloration in leaves of plants, so if I’m a bug, it means maybe I don’t want to nibble on you because you might not be delightful. It might be an anti-predation strategy. But for us humans, it may be loaded with lots of really good nutrients. So compared to a sort of washed-out old piece of ‘Iceberg’ lettuce or something [laughter]—I mean, lettuce is perfectly good, but I’m just saying this packs a punch, I think, some of these do. So there’s also that to learn to use them.

Lane: Yes. And I think that the biggest thing is people’s aversion to this bitterness. I just did this talk down in Napa for a group of physicians and dieticians that are trying to get their clients and people that are having health issues to embrace more bitter flavors.

It really is all about figuring out what to pair it with. So when you go out to eat and you have a radicchio salad, it’s usually fantastic. And if you pay attention, it’s because it is paired with something that’s very creamy, or it’s paired with something that’s sweet. It’s paired with something that’s strong flavor like blue cheese or anchovies or something that complements it. And so in the book, there is this kind of grid where it’s telling you the types of things that you might want to pair it with.

Because I definitely have heard from people like, “Oh, I love radiccho.” And I’m like, “Oh, cool.” So I always ask them, “Well, what do you do? How do you prepare it? What do you do?” “Oh, no, no, I don’t make it at home. I just eat it out because it seems too complicated.“

And it’s like, it’s not complicated at all. It really isn’t. And so hopefully this book also helps with people just demystifying that, because they’re all very simple home recipes. Even if chefs created them, they are very simple for homes. You want to cut up your radicchio and soak it in ice water to leach out some of the bitter compounds that are in the midribs. And then it’s already more mild. If you cook it, it milds it out, mellows it out also. But then there’s this whole grid in there that shows you these are the types of things that you might want to pair it with when it’s raw, like a salad that really complement that bitterness.

Margaret: And it really ranged from things like dried fruits, for instance, or like you say, creamy elements like creme fraiche or even tahini, I think you mentioned, and avocado. And to spicy things, wasabi or whatever, to cheeses, to I think there were even anchovies there. Salty. Exactly. So it depends on what for you creates balance in the mouth, what flavor combination delights your tongue. Lots of possibilities though. And this is the thing is we haven’t as Americans yet experimented, most of us, beyond getting an occasional leaf in a bag of bagged salad or something.

Lane: Exactly. The nice thing about being Americans is we can do whatever we want. In Italy, they have pretty strict rules around what is acceptable or not. But we can blend things. We can put tahini. We can do wasabi I don’t remember putting that on there, but maybe I did.

Margaret: Yeah, I’m looking at the page. There’s a sharp and spicy category that has different horseradish and mustard and whatnot. But yeah, I mean –

Lane: We definitely have a recipe in there that had horseradish.

Margaret: Yeah. So I mean, that’s the thing is, and as you say in the book, you say with salads, especially,  “balance the bitterness,” you talk about. Yeah, but it’s kind of exciting. And then of course there are all these incredible-looking things, pizzas and polentas and risottos and focaccia, all that include as an ingredient in some cases, like a topdressing, so to speak, or whatever, the radicchio in one form or another. And we don’t think about doing that.

And how brilliant is that? I mean, there’s another use and that’s something we all probably know how to do. I mean, make a rice, a risotto, or top a pizza with something, or use polenta with instead of, I usually do it with kale, for instance, but instead of kale, I could try this.

Lane: Exactly. I mean, it was pretty shocking when we went to Italy to get some of the photos for the recipes. I was with Margarett, the co-author, and Shawn [Linehan], the photographer, and we went and almost right away, the first many places we went, because I would ask them, “O.K., make something that you really love or what you would do at home.” And they would come up with something.

But then when I got there, they’d be like, “Oh, I actually really want to do this.” And almost always it was either beans that they made; it was all about the beans, and then it was just topped with some fresh radicchio, or some sort of pork fat like guanciale or pancetta that they cooked up, and then they just poured all over chopped-up radicchio. And I was like, “It’s just simply what is there.” And they involve it in their daily life of meals in some manner. It could be very, very simple.

Margaret: I want to make sure we talk a little bit about some of the upcoming events, both the one at Glywood in Cold Spring, N.Y., on Aug. 30th as well as, which I believe is called a variety showcase, as well as the October one in Portland, and all the other ones on your event page. But when I go to a variety showcase, what does that mean? Because I think people would have a blast at some of these kinds of things.

Lane: So thank you. Yeah, the Variety Showcase is this really cool event where you get the opportunity to understand what plant breeders and seed growers do. It’s a little bit like pulling back the curtain to see the wizards and what they’re doing, because these are the folks that are creating new varieties of  everything from grains, beans, fruits, nuts, vegetables.

And so you get to actually go—and there’s over 40 tables—to interact with the plant breeder or the person that grew the seed and is creating this new thing for organic systems, and you get to taste something. So they’re matched up with really fantastic chefs. They’re from New York City and the Hudson Valley mostly. And you get to taste. So you get to get this sneak peek of behind the scenes, what’s happening before farmers and gardeners even have the seed, and taste things.

Margaret: Right. So I mean that just sounds like really fun. So for gardeners and eaters [laughter].

Lane: Exactly. It is so cool. There’s nothing else like it. It’s great.

Margaret: Yeah. And you have a lot of other things coming up. Again, you have the one in Portland in October, etc.

Lane: I should tell you about that one because that is the celebration of radicchio. So that is the Sagra del Radicchio e Fagioli this year. So a sagra is a celebration in Italy. So this is the celebration of radicchio and fagioli—and beans. So we added beans this year. So this is a really fun, completely cult-like [laughter] following of people that are obsessed with radicchio and winter vegetables and just come together to celebrate and taste them in all these different ways. And it’s the celebration for the book release as well.

Margaret: And I hope we’ll talk at the time that the book comes out later in September, about maybe some recipes and so forth. Maybe we can share something. But yeah, and if people can’t get out to some of these events, if they’re in the wrong side of the country and they can’t get to one, there’s always Instagram because you always put great pictures and so forth on Instagram. But I’m glad to talk to you and I’m glad to hear what you’re up to. So thank you. Thank you so

Lane: Thank you so much for having me. And I will be coming to the East Coast at some point so you can follow along and try to catch us if we go to book events there.
(Photos by Shawn Linehan from the new book, except as noted.)

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MY WEEKLY public-radio show, rated a “top-5 garden podcast” by “The Guardian” newspaper in the UK, began its 17th year in March 2026. It’s produced at Robin Hood Radio, the smallest NPR station in the nation. Listen locally in the Hudson Valley (NY)-Berkshires (MA)-Litchfield Hills (CT) Mondays at 8:30 AM Eastern, rerun at 8:30 Saturdays. Or play the Aug. 10, 2026 show using the player near the top of this transcript. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes/Apple Podcasts or Spotify (and browse my archive of podcasts here).