Braised Endive

You wouldn’t believe how much I’ve missed cooking, I mean really cooking over the last few weeks. I’ve made a few things here and there, but my community supported agriculture (CSA) veggies and groceries have been aging and wilting ever since I have been putting in so many extra hours at work. A couple of weeks ago, the people over at California Vegetable Specialties sent me a complimentary bouquet of endive (pronounce it on-deev and you’ll feel French for about a minute), plus a few extra, and I was crossing my fingers that they would last until I could use them the soonest. It really bothers me when I get such amazing produce and it winds up going to waste because of little time or energy available to me.

I was so excited this weekend, when I finally was in the kitchen, to discover that every single head of endive was usable. A miracle. Or a miracle of packaging. I have never seen endive with its root still attached, but the root is about the same length or longer than the endive plant. The bouquet I received all had the root still attached to each, and I imagine that this is what helped to keep them intact.

Endive

Endive, as a general rule is very bitter raw. I had it raw a few years ago and didn’t like it, but I read recently that the French frequently cook it, thus reducing the bitterness and bringing out some of the more subtle flavors. As soon as I found out that I would be getting some endive in the mail, I knew I’d be braising it.

There are many different recipes out there for braised endive, but I decided to go with a vegan adaptation of an adaptation of Julia Child’s braised endive. Prep time is fast, but it spends some quality time in the oven. You can make this ahead of time and reheat, or just be sure to give yourself plenty of time to make this before serving – about 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

Braised Endive
This recipe is based upon Julia Child’s Braised Endive at Sippity Sup

• 12 small, or 8 large belgian endives
• 1⁄4 teaspoon kosher salt, or more to taste
• 1⁄2 cup water, plus more as needed
• 1⁄2 lemon, juiced or 1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 4 tablespoons vegan butter, sliced into 1/2 tablespoon pieces (if making this gluten-free, be sure the vegan butter you use is gluten-free – not all vegan butters are)
• 2 tablespoons flat leaf parsley, minced as garnish, optional
• Vegenaise, optional

Prepare the endive for cooking by trimming the root ends of the endive, being careful to ensure that the leaves remain attached. Remove any wilted leaves and cut out the brown portions. Wash under cool running water.

Preparing endive

Preheat your oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit. Arrange the endives in a single layer in a stove top and oven-proof casserole or baking dish just large enough to accommodate them.

Ready to cook

Add the salt, water, lemon juice and vegan butter. Cover the dish with a lid or foil and simmer on top of the stove, until just tender, about 20 minutes.

Adding the ingredients, then cooking on the stove for a few minutes

Remove the cover and lay a piece of parchment cut to size onto the surface of the vegetables. Place into the preheated oven and bake about two hours. Baste the endive several times during cooking with the liquid in the dish. If you do not have a baster, just use a ladle or large spoon to pour the liquid over the endive. You may need to add more water to make sure that the liquid remain at about 1/4-inch deep.

Endive about to go into the oven

They are done when the endive is very tender and a pale golden color. Remove from the oven, discard parchment and garnish with parsley if using. Serve warm. To cut the bitter flavor down further, try serving with a little Vegenaise.

Fresh from the oven!

I’m definitely a fan of endive now that I’ve tried it cooked. It is still somewhat bitter, but it is not displeasing and the other flavors that come through – a bit reminiscent of steamed or baked artichokes – are really mellow, yet rich.

Delicious!

There are other recipes I’d love to try, and I’d even be willing to try endive raw again. But what is your favorite way to enjoy endive?

Roasted Artichoke with Meyer Lemon, Garlic and Vegenaise

I love artichokes. If my husband were to come home with flowers for me, he could probably do no better than if he were carrying a bouquet of bright green artichokes. I still don’t know why I love them so much. Maybe it’s like unwrapping a present, slowly savoring each leaf, and as you get closer to the middle the leaves are more like delicate petals and there’s less of a strain to eat it, finally coming to the best part with the savory and meaty heart in the end. It’s a food that gives a wide range of flavors and experiences, that it is its own little meal of appetizer, main course and dessert.

Typically my favorite way of preparing artichokes has been to steam them then serve with lemon butter, but after grabbing some artichokes the other day I decided that I needed to expand a little bit and experiment with roasting them. Although there are more steps involved in roasting artichokes, it does offer an interesting, almost smoky flavor that steaming does not.

Roasted Artichokes

• 2 artichokes, whole and raw
• 1 lemon
• 4 garlic cloves, skins removed
• olive oil
• salt
• Vegenaise, optional

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Clean your artichokes, then cut the end of the stalk off and trim the tips of each leaf.

Cleaning and trimming an artichoke

Put the artichoke on its side and cut away about the first 1/2 inch of top of the artichoke. It’s easiest if you use a serrated knife for this.

Place the artichoke in a position that will be easiest for you to cut it in half. I found that after I cut the top 1/2 inch off that it was easiest to put the flower straight down on the cutting board, then cut through the stem to the top of the artichoke.

Cutting the artichoke in half

Cut a lemon in half, and then spread the lemon on all the cut and exposed areas of the artichokes.

Spreading the lemon juice on the artichokes

In the bottom of a baking pan (with optional aluminum foil covering the inside of the dish) pour about 1 or 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and sprinkle some salt.

Preparing the pan for roasting artichokes

Take your artichokes cut side down and spread them around in the bottom of the pan so that they are fully covered with oil and some of the salt.

Press a fresh garlic clove near the heart of each artichoke half, and then add a large slice of lemon on top of the garlic.

Adding garlic and lemon to the artichokes

Put the artichokes face down in the pan with the garlic and lemon kept under each, then add about 1/4 water to the pan. Cover the pan well with aluminum foil and bake in the oven for about 45 minutes to an hour (depending upon the toughness of the artichokes you choose, as well as your own individual oven, you may find that about an hour and 15 minutes is a better length of time).

Roasting artichokes

Serve the artichoke with a vegan lemon butter or with Vegenaise.

Roasted artichoke served with Vegenaise

This turned out really nicely, but I think that there are a few things I may try or do differently next time.

One thing is that I felt that 45 minutes was not long enough. I like my artichoke leaves really quite tender so I could most definitely have kept them in the oven for at least an hour and 15 minutes, if not more.

Another thing is that I felt that the garlic did not add a lot of flavor, nor did the lemon. However, I think it would have been nice to perhaps blend the roasted garlic with the Vegenaise and then served that as the dipping sauce.

What I did enjoy was squeezing the roasted lemon over the artichokes, but this made eating the artichokes a little messy. It is probably better, at least for dinner parties, to serve a lemon dipping sauce on the side.

At any rate, this was a good experiment for me to try. Any suggestions on other good ways to prepare fresh artichokes?

This is yet another post in my series of how to save money in the kitchen. I haven’t priced out how much this costs this time, because this is more about making do with what you have. If you have these few ingredients on hand or others (like grapes or other berries of some kind), it can be very inexpensive to make. Cheers!

Last weekend was our first official hot weekend of Spring. It was the kind of weekend where the air was sticky and warm, and where we wished that we had gone ahead and put in the air conditioners (no central AC for us). It was also a weekend where we thanked ourselves for having all the right ingredients to create a drink that was exactly what we needed: cool and refreshing.

I have to give my husband credit for this drink, because he had made it a few days prior (thanks for the idea, husband!).

Strawberry Lemonade

• 1 lemon, juiced
• 1 lime, juiced
• 6 – 10 strawberries, trimmed and sliced
• Agave nectar and/or stevia
• Water, cold
• Ice

Put ice into a pitcher. I filled our pitcher with probably about two or two and a half cups of ice.

Juice your lemon and lime straight into the pitcher.

Add the chopped strawberries to the pitcher.

Add sweetener to taste. My husband prefers to use stevia, which is a natural sweetener sans the sugar. You can purchase stevia as a powder or as an extract like this:

As you can see in the next picture, there are 1,440 servings in this little bottle, but we like our drinks sweet so we tend to use more than two drops a serving.

In this recipe I probably put about two full droppers of stevia liquid in the pitcher.

Next fill up the rest of the pitcher with water, and then stir everything together.

Let your pitcher of water sit for about 10 or 15 minutes prior to serving to let the flavor of the strawberries seep into the drink. You can also omit the ice if you won’t be serving immediately and let it sit for a few hours in your refrigerator. It will gradually turn a pinkish color and the strawberry flavor will be more pronounced.

The lovely thing about this drink, besides the fact that it’s refreshing, is that you can get really inventive with it and use really any type of fruit you have on hand. Either time we’ve made it we had strawberries, lemons and limes, but really, you could do most any fruit and it would turn out just as well.

Also, if you have an upcoming picnic, consider serving this in bell jars – it can be a nod to the eventual strawberry jam to come.

So if it’s hot, humid and you have no air conditioning make yourself some strawberry lemonade stat!