Les Endives

Les endives or, just to confuse, what the English call chicory, also appear with winter. Les endives to the French are the white, tightly packed hearts known also as the Belgian endives, not the related salad chicory which is the chicorée-frisée or more often just la frisée.

Chicory grows wild all over the South-West and until the end of the seventeenth century was used solely for medicinal purposes. It was developed ‘industrially’ as a vegetable and as an ingredient for coffee-making from plants in the North of France. Belgium in fact first took the lead in its cultivation but now France claims to head production. You may see at market in the South-West home grown versions of endives, the heads smaller and not so tight or so white. They are none the worse for that but when using them as a vegetable, you should obviously allow several heads per person. All the chicory family are protected from the light as they grow in order to reduce their bitterness and keep their pale colour. Even so, when cooking the white endive hearts these are always best blanched first. If they are then slowly braised, they have a sweet-sour, buttery taste and are a perfect combination for a rich meat dish like l’enchaud de porc perigourdin.