Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Braised Endive

Oh, look at me! Entering another Kitchen Play contest. You know why? Because I keep winning. Yep, I'm on a streak, and if it's going to be this easy, I'm going to keep entering. Or, heck, even if it was a little harder, I'd probably keep entering because it gets me thinking about making things I probably wouldn't have made otherwise.

This time the magic ingredient was endive. Which I pronounce en-dive. Because I'm quirky like that. Pronounce it ohn-deeve if it makes you happy, though. I won't argue.

Anyway, the contest is sponsored by Endive.com. A vegetable with its own website. I mean, why not? The interesting thing is that I've had endive raw at home in salad, and I've probably had it cooked elsewhere, but I've never cooked with it.

I decided to start my contest journey this month with a relatively simple recipe for braised endive. I mean, might as well let the endive be the star. And of course, this let us really taste the endive in all its leafy glory.

My first problem with the recipe was that the store I went to didn't have medium or large endive. They were all pretty darned small. I say "all" like there were a lot of them. There were like, three. You take what you can get. But hey, there's only two of us, so I figured that one endive would make a dainty little side dish. And although I thought I had a lemon to zest at home, it was nowhere to be found. So I let lemon olive oil play that role.

See me riffing on the original recipe? See how easy it is to adapt recipes to what you have or what you like? You don't have to follow recipes slavishly. Do what you like. That's what makes cooking fun. Or, if not fun, it makes it challenging. And when you conquer a challenge, you feel good, right?

Braised Endive

1 small-medium endive, bottom trimmed, and cut in half lengthwise.
Chicken or vegetable stock
White wine vinegar
Salt and pepper, to taste

Garnish:
Chopped parsley
Lemon-infused olive

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Sprinkle cut side of endive with salt and pepper, then place cut-side down in a oven-safe baking dish that will hold the endive comfortably, but snugly. Add stock to the dish, just enough to cover about halfway up the endive. Add a splash of the wine vinegar - about a tablespoon.

Cover tightly with foil and bake at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Uncover the pan, turn endive over, and bake another 15-30 minutes (depending on size of endive) until endive is cooked through and just beginning to brown a bit.

Remove endive to serving plate, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and add just a few drops of lemon olive oil to each - or more, to taste. Serve warm.
Yum

3 comments:

Marketplace Maverick said...

Not sure how to contact you, but I've got a question on the sourdough pizza recipe from Serious Eats. Maybe you can reply to kevinbarton123 at yahoo dot com?

My question is if you've tried this sourdough pizza recipe (http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/12/starter-along-sourdough-pizza.html) using the skillet-broiler method from Kenji (but using the food processor dough recipe here: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/10/new-york-style-pizza.html), and if I might need to make some technique adjustments. I compared the amounts in your sourdough pizza recipe to Kenji's, which I normally halve, and the amounts are roughly similar. This usually makes 2x 9.5-10 oz. dough balls. Yes, I weigh each of my balls...moving on.

My plan of attack is to take my starter out of the fridge tonight and combine with flour + water, let it sit out. Then I'm going to combine that in a food processor tomorrow night with the other pizza dough ingredients. The dough will cold ferment until Sunday (~3.5 days), then I'll take it out about 3 hours before bake time, form my dough balls, and let them rise. From there, I'll do it business as usual - stretch the dough, place in skillet, sauce, cheese, top and then under the broiler for 2.5 - 3 mins.

Casey said...

Hi Donna,

Once again, you've had your way with a Kitchen Play recipe and made it sound pretty fun in the process! In the research I've done, most California endive are on the small-ish side. But they are so very good for you!

Thanks for playing along and good luck (as if you need it, right? :D).

Best,
Casey

Donna Currie said...

Kevin - I emailed you as well, but if anyone else is interested, this is what I said:

I haven't tried the other recipe, but dough is pretty forgiving. If the amounts are similar, you should be fine.

The only thing I'd warn you about is that you can easily over-knead with a food processor. It's fine for doughs that you're going to use right away, but if you're cold fermenting, you don't need a whole lot of kneading, so it's possible that between the food processor and the cold ferment you could end up with gluten that's starting to fall apart.

You might be better off just hand-mixing the ingredients until they're well combined. The long rest will finish developing the gluten for you. Adam recently made pizza where he combined the FP and the cold ferment and he ended up with a texture he described as "creepy bagel." I have no idea what that is, but it doesn't sound good. And he wasn't happy with it.

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