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Veal Gravy, Endive With
Wash and clean twelve heads of endive, and beware of the worms which are generally found in the heart. After having taken off all the green part of the leaves, wash the endive again in two or three different waters, and blanch them to take away the bitter taste. Then throw them into cold water, and when quite cold squeeze them till there is no water left in them, then chop them very fine. Next stew them in a quantity of gravy sufficient to cover them entirely, to which add a little salt and a very small lump of sugar to counteract the bitter, tart taste of the endive. Ascertain if they are done enough by squeezing a bit between two fingers; if very tender they are done. Then add two spoonfuls of Spanish sauce reduced, and use them either of entremets, under poached eggs, or for entrees, such as minces of mutton, fricandeaux, sweetbreads, fillets of fowl, etc.
A classic French treatment of chicory as a garnish vegetable, written when "gravy" meant unthickened brown stock rather than anything from a packet. Twelve heads is a restaurant quantity; it reduces to a surprisingly small amount of purée.
- Which endiveThe green outer leaves being discarded points to broad-leaved escarole or curly endive (frisée), not the pale Belgian witloof chicon, which has no green to remove. Escarole is the closest match in both bitterness and bulk.
- YieldTwelve trimmed heads, blanched and wrung dry, cook down to a small quantity of chopped greens, enough to garnish a dish for a large table. For a household dish, three or four heads is plenty.
- Gravy means stockIn this book "gravy" is brown veal or beef stock, lightly reduced and unthickened. Use a good unsalted brown stock; a modern flour-thickened pan gravy will turn the dish pasty.
- Spanish sauceEspagnole: brown stock thickened with brown roux and enriched with mirepoix (tomato in the later versions), then reduced. Two spoonfuls of a well-reduced demi-glace, or a concentrated brown sauce, does the same job of binding and glossing.
- The blanching is the hingeTwo or three changes of water, a short boil, then a plunge into cold water and a hard squeeze is what makes the dish palatable. Skip it and the sugar and stock will not save the bitterness. Squeeze in a towel until the leaves are genuinely dry, or the stew will be watery.
- Stewing timeThe recipe gives no time, only the finger test: simmer covered, with the stock reducing around the greens, and squeeze a piece between two fingers to judge it. Chicory fibre can stay stringy long after it looks cooked.
- The sugar"A very small lump" is perhaps a teaspoon's worth for the full twelve heads. It rounds off the tartness rather than sweetening; scale it down with the quantity.
- Worms and washingThe warning is not obsolete. Escarole and frisée hearts trap grit and insects; separate the leaves and wash in standing water so the debris sinks, rather than under a running tap.
- Entremets and entreesAn entremets here is a side dish served between courses, not a dessert. As a bed under poached eggs, or beneath sweetbreads, fricandeau or sliced fillets of chicken, it works exactly as creamed spinach does today.
Bitter chicories were treated as kitchen-garden vegetables long before they became salad leaves, and blanching-then-braising in stock is the standard nineteenth-century French method for taming them, applied equally to endive, cardoon and celery. The vocabulary of this entry \\gravy for brown stock, Spanish sauce for espagnole, endive served "of entremets" — belongs to the world of the English-language grande cuisine manuals of the earlier 1800s, the tradition of Louis Eustache Ude and Charles Elmé Francatelli. Its purpose is plain enough: this is not a dish in itself so much as a component, one of the standard beds and linings a cook was expected to have ready for eggs, sweetbreads and small cuts of meat.