Katrina Herrmann Eats the Greens: Endive
This is a guest post by sub-host Matthew Knisley. If you listened to Episode 5, then you know Matthew accepted a challenge to introduce Katrina to one new leafy green each month in 2018.
Welcome to the first installment of Katrina Herrmann Eats the Greens, except that I need help deciding if it needs an introductory title. Some options:
Beyond the Kale
Kale me Maybe?
Turning Over a New Leaf...and Eating It.
We will begin with endive. How much background do you want about each vegetable? Endive is fun because it's part of a range of wild and cultivated species that are often interchangeably called endive or chicory, some of which are grown for the leaves, some of which are grown for the roots. It gets really confusing keeping them all straight, but this guide is sufficient for our purposes:
The endive we'll be eating looks like this, and it is grown for the leaves. This is almost always only called endive in the US.
Another endive/chicory grown for the leaves is frisée, the stuff that makes salads look pretty but really hard and annoying to eat.
Finally, have you ever heard of the chicory coffee for your beignets at Cafe du Monde in New Orleans? This comes from a cultivated form of a plant you have likely seen growing wild along roadsides, but the very bitter leaves of the wild form are used in some cuisines.
I believe this is the recipe I have riffed on most often, but many delicious variants are out there:
https://www.chowhound.com/recipes/braised-belgian-endive-13613
If you are leery of the bitterness, this recipe, although more complicated, might be quite delicious:
https://thefitchen.com/pan-seared-belgian-endives-with-white-wine-orange-reduction-2/
Stanley's (a local grocery store in Chicago, IL) often has endive, I would suspect that Mariano's is more likely to have it than is Jewel, and Whole Foods almost certainly carries it.
Editor's Note: Matthew then included this link to lettuce gifs. Let us know how you feel about being rickrolled by lettuce.