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Stuffed Chicory
Make a mince of any cold white meat, such as veal, pork or chicken, and add to it some minced ham; sprinkle it with a thick white sauce. In the meantime the chicories should be cooking; tie each one round with a thread to keep them firm and boil them for ten minutes. When cooked, drain them well, open them lengthwise very carefully, and slip in a spoonful of the mince. Close them, keeping the leaves very neat, and, if necessary, tie them round again. Put them in a fire-proof dish with a lump of butter on each, and let them heat through. Serve them in their juice or with more of the white sauce, taking care to remove the threads.
A frugal use for cold roast meat, and the dish that later hardened into the Belgian classic of endive rolled in ham with béchamel. The whole thing depends on knowing what "chicory" means here.
- Chicory means Belgian endiveThis is witloof — the tight pale torpedo-shaped heads, sold in the US as Belgian endive and in Britain as chicory. Not curly endive, frisée, or the red-leaved chicories, none of which can be opened lengthwise and stuffed.
- QuantityFigure two heads per person as a side dish, one to two as a light supper. Four heads take roughly a cup of mince and a cup of white sauce.
- The white sauceA thick béchamel: 2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour, about a cup of milk, cooked until it coats a spoon heavily. 'Sprinkle' reads oddly in English — the sense wanted is just enough to bind the mince into a paste that will stay inside the leaves, with more sauce reserved for serving.
- Ten minutes is for small headsBoil small heads 10 minutes, fat ones 15, and test the base with a knife tip: the core should give but the head must still hold together, or it will fall apart when you open it.
- Draining mattersEndive holds a great deal of water. Drain cut side down on a towel and press gently, or the finished dish will be a pool of grey liquid rather than juice worth serving in.
- BitternessBoiling water leaches out some of the bitter compounds; a pinch of sugar and a squeeze of lemon in the cooking water is a common correction. Buy heads with tight, pale-yellow tips — green, opened tips are markedly more bitter.
- "Fire-proof dish" and "heat through"'Fire-proof dish' and 'heat through' -- An earthenware or enamelled gratin dish. The recipe gives no oven or temperature; a moderate oven, say 375°F for about 20 minutes, will heat them through, and a hotter oven if you choose to finish with sauce over the top and a little grated cheese until it colours.
- Cold cooked meatThe mince is already cooked, so the oven stage is reheating. Bring the filled heads properly hot all the way through rather than merely warming the butter on top, particularly with pork.
- The threadsCotton kitchen twine, and count them as you tie so you can count them out again. Wooden toothpicks work as well and are easier to see against the pale leaves.
Witloof chicory is a Belgian development of the nineteenth century, traditionally credited to growers around Brussels who found that chicory roots stored in the dark threw up tender blanched heads; the Brussels botanical garden and its gardener Frans Bresiers are usually named in the story, from around the middle of the century. By 1900 it was widely exported and well established as a national vegetable, cheap in winter, which may be part of why it turns up here stretched with a spoonful of yesterday's roast. The Belgian Cook Book itself belongs to the First World War: it was assembled in Britain from recipes contributed by Belgian refugees, and its economy — cold meat, a little ham, a flour-and-milk sauce — reads as much like wartime housekeeping as like national cuisine. The same pairing survives today as chicons au gratin, endive wrapped in ham and baked under béchamel and cheese.