WINTER TREATS: On Diving into Bitterness
Calling someone an endive in French is not a compliment. It is a term used to express someone’s lack of character or very pale complexion. If I can understand the comparison when it comes to colour, I am perplexed about the comparison with the character. Endives are not tepid — far from it. This oblong-shaped type of chicory with yellow tips holds a bitterness that is not everyone’s taste, but no one can be indifferent to it.
In my family, endives mark the beginning of winter. It is cheap and easy to cook. I was not different from other children, I was not a fan of its bitterness. In our defence, bitterness is an unusual taste in Western cuisines, rarer than in for example Asian cuisines. It is even less well accepted because our tongues have larger areas of receptors to detect bitterness making it more pronounced than other tastes. It is believed to be nature’s way to protect humans against toxic food and poisons which are often bitter.
Funnily though, really bitter foods are in fact quite common, and people go to great lengths to mask or transform the bitterness.
Take coffee. Tons of coffee are drunk everywhere in the world. But what proportion of coffee drinkers take their coffee black?
Take cocoa. It has a strong bitterness and we feel compelled to transform it into delicious chocolate adding sugar.
And take beer. Apparently, drinking bitterness with alcohol makes it more acceptable.
Endives seem to share the same fate. French mothers have ingeniously invented a dish to cover up the bitter taste. They wrap endives with ham, drown them in litres of béchamel cream covered with grated gruyère cheese. Then, they bake them in an oven “et voilà!” children can eat their “healthy” vegetable tonight.
Well, this was maybe true for other families. Not for mine. My mother is a big fan of endives and she likes them cooked in the simplest ways: one of them is braisées in a thick-bottomed pot. This kind of cooking gives the main role to the taste of endives. They are slowly cooked in their juice — with just a little addition of sugar or our family’s honey and lemon juice, to tamper with the bitterness. She also makes them as a cold dish. First, she steams or boils them. Then she concocts a vinaigrette sauce with olive oil and red vinegar that we mix and eat with the vegetable. So, you can imagine my disappointment as a child, every dinner we had endives. Winters were long — culinary-wise.
As I get older, my taste seems to have turned. In the same manner I started to appreciate my coffee just black, prefer dark chocolate over milk chocolate and drink cold beers during the summer — I started to enjoy endives, even crave for it.
Clearly, bitterness is an acquired taste.
Living in a country where endives are not found in the wet markets, I enjoy going back to my parents’ in Lyon during winter. Every time my mother cooks endive my appetite grows and I sit at the family table in great anticipation.
This winter is different though. I have had my first endives of the season in Shanghai — I unexpectedly found some on an online grocery shop. Overjoyed, I called my mother to ask for her recipe for endives braisées and found out that she has not one but two recipes.
Here is one of them, this recipe will serve six people:
- Remove the tough part of the hearts of 12 endives and cut each endive into half.
- Add a little butter or any kind of cooking oil in a large, thick-bottomed pot. If you want to spice things up, you can add some onions.
- Put the endives halves facing downwards and sizzle them for a few minutes until slightly golden.
- Add just enough water to cover the endives.You can top up if necessary.
- Cover the pot with the lid only for ¾ and let simmer on a low heat for about 20 minutes.
- The dish is ready when nearly all the water is gone.
You can cheat a little and add sugar or honey before serving should you think the bitterness might put you or your guests off.
With this delicious, simple and healthy recipe, you are all set for winter. But of course, if you are still not sure about encountering the bitterness but are nonetheless curious, you may want to cook “Endives drowned in béchamel and gruyere” instead.
FOOD+ would love to hear about the bitter-tasting foods found in your country and how you cook them. You can share it in the comments below or write to the editors. In the meantime, if you feel more inclined towards a taste other than bitterness:
These recipes are part of FOOD+ journal’s “Side Dishes”, more to come.
