How to prepare endives

A recipe from cooking-ez.com

For 4 endives, you will need:

• 1 5 endives (head of chicory)
• 2 Coarse salt
• 3 Water
• Total weight: 350 grams

Times:

Preparation	Resting	Cooking	Start to finish
20 min.	5 min.	3 min.	28 min.

Step by step recipe

1	Trim a little from the base of 5 endives (head of chicory), remove and discard any untidy leaves, then wash endives.
2	Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Using a sharp knife, cut out a small cone from the base of the endive and discard it. The size of the cone depends on the size of the endive; generally, 1 or 1/2 centimeter is enough. This is done to reduce the bitterness of the endive. Tip: If the endives are medium or large, it’s best to cut them in half lengthwise; this helps them cook more evenly. Your endives are now ready to be cooked or eaten raw.
3	Blanching Endives If you plan to cook them and want to reduce their bitterness a little, you can blanch them. Plunge the endives into boiling salted water for 2 or 3 minutes...
4	... remove them with a slotted spoon and plunge them into very cold water—ice-cold if possible. You’ve just blanched the endives—this is often done to reduce their bitterness.
5	Let the endives soak in cold water for 5 minutes, then drain and dry them. The best way to do this is to spin them ina salad spinner, then set them aside on a kitchen towel. This step is essential (or nearly so), because endives have an unfortunate tendency, once cooked, to act like sponges and absorb a lot of water; this will prevent you from ending up with water at the bottom of your baking dish (my personal nightmare).

Remarks

In this recipe I say "reduce bitterness" because we don't want to suppress it entirely: it's part of the endive taste, its character, that we should keep.

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