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Radicchio - which tastes as good as it looks. :-)

I didn't know:

>>Pliny the Elder claimed radicchio was useful as a blood purifier and an aid for insomniacs in Naturalis Historia. In fact, radicchio contains intybin, a sedative/analgesic, as well as a type of flavonoid called anthocyanin which is used for making dye-sensitized solar cells.

 

Modern cultivation of the plant began in the fifteenth century, in the Veneto, Friuli Venezia Giulia and Trentino regions of Italy, but the deep-red radicchio of today was engineered in 1860 by the Belgian agronomist Francesco Van den Borre, who used a technique called imbianchimento (whitening), preforcing, or blanching to create the dark red, white-veined leaves: radicchio plants are taken from the ground and placed in water in darkened sheds, where lack of light and ensuing inhibition of chlorophyll production cause the plants to lose their green pigmentation.<<

from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicchio

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Uploaded on November 12, 2016
Taken on November 12, 2016