This is a really interesting, delicious winter salad dish which is a great way of using up all the crunchy winter veg that's available. Its proper name is bagna cauda, which basically means "hot bath" in Italian, and the idea is that you have a load of raw or just cooked pieces of vegetable which you dip into a delicious, warm sauce. You may like your sauce to be thick and oozy but I prefer mine to be quite thin and delicate, like the texture of thin custard, with a lovely sheen to it. You can use any vegetables you want, and depending on the season you can do a light summer version or a more root-veg-based winter one. I actually prefer my veg to be raw, as I love the crunch you get from them, but if you want to boil them briefly until they're al dente, feel free.

Ingredients

• For the vegetables
• A few young carrots, peeled and finely sliced
• A few small raw beets, peeled and finely sliced
• A few sticks celery, trimmed and thinly sliced, yellow leaves reserved
• 1/2 small Romanesco or white cauliflower, broken into florets
• 1 bulb fennel, trimmed and finely sliced, herby tops reserved
• 1 handful small beet leaves, if available, washed
• 1 bunch radishes, trimmed and washed
• 1/2 a celeriac, peeled and finely sliced

For the sauce:

• 6 cloves garlic, peeled
• 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon milk
• 10 anchovy fillets in oil
• 2/3 cup good extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for drizzling
• 2 or 3 tablespoons good white wine vinegar

Directions