Honey and orange braised chicory
As a vegetable, chicory - also known as endive - is rather intriguing. The pale leaves are the result of a two-stage growth process, which sees the harvested plants discarded and the roots dug up. The roots are then kept in storage before the time comes to move them to a darkened 'forcing room', where the endives mature.
A short walk around the local markets reveals stalls bursting with endive. The bitter leaves are wonderful in a summer salad with a mix of greens, some shaved fennel, and cubes of avocado, but it's a vegetable that responds very well to braising.
For those who have been put off by chicory's bitter reputation, gently cooking the heads with sweet honey and acidic citrus transform the flavours into something altogether softer, more likely to convert.
You can serve this chicory recipe with all manner of meats, from roasted chicken to grilled pork, but it works particularly well with aiguilettes de canard au miel, a Perigord favourite. The natural bitterness of the chicory offsets the honey in both dishes, and the result is a meal you don't need a sweet tooth to enjoy. Follow this with a sharp green salad and a plate of cheese and you will be eating like a local.
Honey and orange braised chicory
A short walk around the local markets reveals stalls bursting with endive. The bitter leaves are wonderful in a summer salad with a mix of greens, some shaved fennel, and cubes of avocado, but it's a vegetable that responds very well to braising.
For those who have been put off by chicory's bitter reputation, gently cooking the heads with sweet honey and acidic citrus transform the flavours into something altogether softer, more likely to convert.
You can serve this chicory recipe with all manner of meats, from roasted chicken to grilled pork, but it works particularly well with aiguilettes de canard au miel, a Perigord favourite. The natural bitterness of the chicory offsets the honey in both dishes, and the result is a meal you don't need a sweet tooth to enjoy. Follow this with a sharp green salad and a plate of cheese and you will be eating like a local.
Honey and orange braised chicory
- 1 chicory head per person
- 1 tbsp olive oil per 4 heads of chicory
- 1 tbsp honey per 4 heads of chicory
- 1 tsp fresh thyme leaves per 4 heads of chicory
- the juice and zest of half an orange per 4 heads of chicory
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Pre-heat oven to 180C, then prepare the chicory by trimming the root end before slicing each head in half lengthways.
- Mix all of the remaining ingredients to make the dressing, and place the chicory face-down in an ovenproof dish. Cover with the dressing and season.
- Roast for around an hour, turning and basting the chicory at 15-minute intervals. It is ready when the liquid has cooked down to a thick, sticky syrup and the chicory has caramelised.
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Who is Bruno Courreges?
Bruno cooks, he hunts, he builds his own house and grows his own food. He organizes the parades and festivities and fireworks displays and keeps order in his fictional home town of St Denis. A pillar of the local tennis and rugby clubs, he teaches sports to the local schoolchildren.
Bruno finds lost dogs, fights fires, registers births and deaths, and enforces the parking regulations. But he maintains a sophisticated intelligence network to outwit the interfering bureaucrats of the European Union in far-off Brussels. The country folk of the Perigord have been making their foie gras and their cheeses and sausages for centuries before the EU was ever heard of, and see no reason to bow to its rules and regulations now.
Bruno also catches criminals.
But Bruno applies his own sense of justice in doing so, which sometimes put him at odds with the local Gendarmes, with the professional detectives of the Police Nationale, and with the politicians in distant Paris.
And much to the frustration of those matrons of St Denis with unmarried daughters, for whom he is the town’s most eligible and charming bachelor, Bruno remains stubbornly and contentedly single. He is, however, a great romantic with a profound if somewhat wary appreciation of the fair sex. He fell deeply and tragically in love in once, in his time in the French Army where he served and was wounded in the peacekeeping force sent to Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo. The incident is recounted in the first novel, ‘Bruno Chief of Police.’
Bruno never knew his father, and his unmarried mother left him as a baby in a basket in a church. Christened Benoit, the blessed, by the priest who found him and sent him to a church orphanage, he decide to call himself Bruno as soon as he was old enough to insist upon it. When his mother died and left a note explaining where she had left her baby, he was taken from the orphanage by cousins in humble circumstances and raised with their large family in the town of Bergerac. At the age of 15, he left to join the Army’s Youth Battalion. On his 18th birthday, he signed up for 12 years with the combat engineers, a period which ended while he was convalescing from his wounds.
Bruno reports to the long-time Mayor of St Denis, Gerard Mangin, a wily old politician who once worked as a political secretary to the future President of France Jacques Chirac. The Mayor’s political connections, his time at the European Commission as Chirac’s eyes and ears in Brussels and his brief stint as a member of the French Senate, always proved useful. Above all, they have ensured a steady supply of grants and funds from Brussels and Paris that ensure St Denis prospers when so many small towns of rural France have withered.
Bruno finds lost dogs, fights fires, registers births and deaths, and enforces the parking regulations. But he maintains a sophisticated intelligence network to outwit the interfering bureaucrats of the European Union in far-off Brussels. The country folk of the Perigord have been making their foie gras and their cheeses and sausages for centuries before the EU was ever heard of, and see no reason to bow to its rules and regulations now.
Bruno also catches criminals.
But Bruno applies his own sense of justice in doing so, which sometimes put him at odds with the local Gendarmes, with the professional detectives of the Police Nationale, and with the politicians in distant Paris.
And much to the frustration of those matrons of St Denis with unmarried daughters, for whom he is the town’s most eligible and charming bachelor, Bruno remains stubbornly and contentedly single. He is, however, a great romantic with a profound if somewhat wary appreciation of the fair sex. He fell deeply and tragically in love in once, in his time in the French Army where he served and was wounded in the peacekeeping force sent to Bosnia during the siege of Sarajevo. The incident is recounted in the first novel, ‘Bruno Chief of Police.’
Bruno never knew his father, and his unmarried mother left him as a baby in a basket in a church. Christened Benoit, the blessed, by the priest who found him and sent him to a church orphanage, he decide to call himself Bruno as soon as he was old enough to insist upon it. When his mother died and left a note explaining where she had left her baby, he was taken from the orphanage by cousins in humble circumstances and raised with their large family in the town of Bergerac. At the age of 15, he left to join the Army’s Youth Battalion. On his 18th birthday, he signed up for 12 years with the combat engineers, a period which ended while he was convalescing from his wounds.
Bruno reports to the long-time Mayor of St Denis, Gerard Mangin, a wily old politician who once worked as a political secretary to the future President of France Jacques Chirac. The Mayor’s political connections, his time at the European Commission as Chirac’s eyes and ears in Brussels and his brief stint as a member of the French Senate, always proved useful. Above all, they have ensured a steady supply of grants and funds from Brussels and Paris that ensure St Denis prospers when so many small towns of rural France have withered.
