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
18 min.	5 min.	3 min.	26 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: Boil a large pan of salted water.
  With a small sharp knife, remove a small cone from the bottom and discard it. The cone size depends on endive size, usually about half an inch is fine.
  This reduces the endive's bitter taste.
  Note:If endive are medium or big size, think to cut them in two, from top to bottom, to reduce cooking and blenching time.
• 3: Put endives in boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes...
• 4: ... then remove them using a skimmer, put into very cold water.
  You've just blanched endives, and we do that to reduce the bitterness still further.
• 5: Leave endives in cold water for five minutes, then drain and dry them. The best way is to use a salad spinner, and then leave on a tea-towel.

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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