Weekly Bulletin 02.15.12

Menu Inspiration of the Week: Marvelous Mixed Chicories

The chicory family is large and diverse. Chicorium intybus, a group of perennial cultivated plants, developed from wild chicory. In old England the wild plant was called succory. In Italian and French, the moniker was barbe de capuchin and barbe di cappuccino, translating to “Capuchin monk’s beard”. Wild chicory was used as a vegetable and salad green in classical Greece and Rome, harvested young to avoid the bitterness found in more mature plants. Cultivation commenced in the 1600’s and today there are hundreds of permutations including Puntarelle, or “little points”, Sugarloaf, many radicchios including Tardivo, Variegata and Castelfranco. A large rooted variety was developed in Holland in the mid 1800’s, dried, ground and used as an alternative to coffee, which was just gaining popularity and which was quite expensive. To this day this ground chicory is blended with coffee and consumed in France, Spain, and New Orleans in particular. Then there’s Witloof (white leaf), which we know in its sprouted form, Belgian Endive, born from harvested roots and cultivated in the dark. Chicory takes many forms, from broad and narrow leaved varieties to loose leaves to fully headed types. C. endivia is a kissing cousin to chicory, and includes Curly Endive, Escarole, and Frisee.

There’s chicory, and then there’s County Line Harvest’s Mixed Chicories, an enticing mix of 4-8 heirloom varieties commingling in one 5-pound, chef-friendly case. Most all of David’s chicories end up in salads.
 Their bracing bitterness is usually balanced with something sweet, one or several ingredients including  citrus, apples, pears, peppers, roasted beets, parsnips, yams, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, or either black Spanish or Watermelon radish. Also, a cheese and/or toasted nut for complimentary concord and texture play well in the salad bowl, and another protein shows up often, a favorite being bacon or pancetta with or without some of the fat used in the dressing. Cooking mellows chicory. A long, slow, vinegary braise creates a lush, soft, mellow dish, perfect finished with some combo of lemon juice, red chile flakes, garlic and oil. Talk about comfort food!