Endive

Endive is a leafy plant of the chicory genus, widely grown as one of the bitter-leaved vegetables sold as endive and escarole, and often confused with its relative, common chicory. Two main kinds are cultivated: curly endive, or frisée, and escarole, the broad-leaved endive, whose paler leaves are less bitter. Escarole goes raw into green salads or is cooked like other greens, sautéed or added to soups and stews; in southern Italy it is often smothered, and in Naples it is stuffed for Christmas. The leaves are rich in folate and in vitamins A and K. Northcote's 1903 Book of Herbs says that every kind must be blanched, passes on Mrs Roundell's warning that endive is troublesome to cook because insects crowd into it, and quotes Parkinson's praise of blanched endive as a winter salad. She regretted that a plant once credited with such powers had shrunk to a salad herb: it was said to break any bond, to make its owner invisible, and to let a lover who carried it persuade the lady of his choice that he had every quality she admired. Cunningham gathers it for magic on 27 June or 25 July, digging it up with a piece of gold or a stag's horn, a rule Northcote also reports. It is worn fresh as a talisman to draw love, renewed every three days, and served in salads to stir lust.