Endiva
What do you do when you mistakenly order 4.14 lbs of endive from Safeway.com and they deliver it? Experiment. It's like what happened when I mistakenly ordered over 3 lbs of carrots.
I seem to do this a lot, but I maintain it's not my fault -- it's the stupid, low-tech, frames-happy Safeway.com website that doesn't exactly tell me how much I'm getting. Once I made the mistake of ordering 1 endive and they delivered a plastic baggie with a single leaf in it. You might ask why I bother with ordering groceries from a website at all, but then we'd have to get into how I'm saving the environment by not having a car, and MUNI fares going up while MUNI routes are getting cut and, well, that way madness lies.
ANYWAY. 5 lbs of endive.
Last night I used them in a beet salad with candied pecans, blue cheese, and a nice port wine vinaigrette. It was...fine. But it wasn't blowing my clogs off. So, as I lay in bed a few unsatisfied hours later, I started thinking about what else I could do with the 6 lbs of endive and lo if I didn't have to restrain myself from dashing to the kitchen to start inventing right then and there. To my husband's relief, I managed to restrain myself until tonight. As soon as I got home, I cranked the oven up to 475 degrees and started quartering my endive lengthwise. Next, I tossed the pieces with salt, pepper, and olive oil and shoved them in the oven. Until our smoke alarm went off. Have no fear -- it always goes off. It seems to have a very low tolerance for my experiments.
About 30 minutes later I pulled out my 7 lbs of roasted endive and dug in. And then I burned my tongue, so I thought it was a good idea to wait.
Meh.
See, I had such amazing success with the roasted cauliflower that I figured any roasted vegetable would bring me to that same state of caramelized nirvana. Sadly, that was not to be with my 8 lbs of endive. I mean, they were okay, but they were kind of soggy and a touch more bitter than I was expecting. I could've tossed them with a nut vinaigrette but I just didn't feel like it. I really wanted them to be perfect out of the oven. I salvaged the evening by putting another experiment into effect: spreading individual leaves with Gorgonzola dolce and drizzling with chestnut honey.
It was a chicory dessert.
And that's what you do with 10 lbs of endive.