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Chicory a la Ferdinand
Boil and chop in medium-sized pieces the chicory, mince up a few chives according to your taste and heat both the vegetables in some cream, adding salt and pepper. Pour on a dish and decorate with chopped hard-boiled eggs.
A four-line vegetable dish that depends entirely on knowing which "chicory" is meant and on not letting the cream break. Everything else is seasoning.
- Which chicoryIn a Belgian book of this date, chicory means witloof — the pale, tight, torpedo-shaped heads sold in English-speaking countries as Belgian endive or chicons. Not curly endive, not radicchio, and not the roasted root sold for coffee.
- Boiling the headsWhole heads take 10-15 minutes in salted water depending on size; test with a knife tip at the base. Chicory turns bitter and grey if overcooked, and it holds a great deal of water, so drain it well and press gently before chopping or the cream will thin out into a puddle.
- A squeeze of lemonAdding a little lemon juice to the cooking water keeps the leaves pale rather than drab. The recipe itself does not call for it.
- "Heat both the vegetables in some cream"Use heavy cream, about 1/2 cup for four heads, and keep it below a rolling boil so it reduces and coats rather than curdling. Modern light cream and half-and-half will split. The recipe names no grade or quantity of cream.
- ChivesRaw chives lose their point if stewed. Add most of them at the very end, off the heat, and reserve a pinch for the top with the egg.
- Yield and servingNo quantities are given, so yield depends on how much chicory is cooked; four heads with the cream above would serve four as a side dish alongside roast or boiled meat. It is served warm, in a shallow dish, with the chopped egg scattered over just before it goes to table so the white stays distinct.
- SeasoningChicory is bitter and cream is sweet; the dish needs more salt than you expect and a good amount of white pepper to come into focus. Season after the cream has reduced, not before.
The Belgian Cook Book was assembled in 1915 from recipes given by Belgian refugees who had fled to England after the German invasion, and its short, almost telegraphic entries read like dishes recited from memory rather than copied from a book — which is largely what they were. Witloof chicory is the most Belgian ingredient in it: the blanched forcing method that produces those pale heads was developed around Brussels in the middle of the nineteenth century, traditionally credited to a grower who found chicory roots sprouting tender white shoots in a dark cellar, and the crop is said to have become an important Belgian export by the turn of the century, which is why the vegetable still carries the country's name in English. Dishes here named for a person — Ferdinand, in this case — seem more often than not to be family attributions with no fixed meaning beyond the household that cooked them, and the pairing of a bitter braised vegetable with cream and chopped hard-boiled egg is a thoroughly Northern European habit, the egg doing the work that a sauce mousseline or a handful of breadcrumbs might do elsewhere.