An Effing Foodie

...and, in Defense of Endives

As much as I enjoy Lux's metaphor for WASPs-as-poky-peculiar-pallid-veggies, I don't share his dislike for Belgian endive.  (I do share his dislike for skimpy salad portions, and the prickly establishments that serve them.  IT'S SALAD.  PENNIES.  Pile it on, gawddammit.)

I like that they're so distinctively waxy, crisp and bitter--when an endive snaps in your teeth, it can be mistaken for little else.  The separated curls of each leaf are sharp little gondolas for all manner of things runny and rich: Soft cheeses, fondue, crab or artichoke dip. 

Think celery but more fay, and meaner.  Or if bok choy had light-deprived, bitterly-ankle-biting midget cousins.

I tend to slice them into 1/2-inch cuticles and toss them with crumbled blue cheese (hullo, Cabrales!), chunks of green apple or pear, honey, and black pepper.  Pungent, sweet, crunchy and spicy, there's nothing chaste or clerical about it.

Cooking endives is something I've never done, but am muy curious about; the French tend to make them into gratin, which sounds silky-sexy-comforting. 

I think that even Thomas Lux may concede in this case: Nothing is so irritatingly twee that it can't be made delicious by covering it in rustic pig and cream.  Some time ago, the effervescent Matt Armendariz posted a simple but gorgeous recipe for Braised Endive that has lingered in the recesses of must-try: Winter project?  NodNODnod. 

P.S. Where have I been? Mostly, trying to plot a way to puke into this guy's hat.

Food Poems: Endive, by Thomas Lux

 

Endive*

If I mix a vegetable and moral metaphor
then this pale,
arrogant little leaf—its juices spare,
its taste pinched
and numbing—is equivalent
to a rich child pulling legs
off a bug, to a swaggering walk through a TB ward
by a pulmonary giant. Not to mention
a pathetic excuse for salad: four, five spiked shards
arranged like spokes
around its hub: a radish delicately carved.
The white plate upon which it sits so bare it blinds me.
Who, forced to wear white butler's gloves,
bends over a row all day
to pick this for a lousy wage
and can't afford or, I'd prefer, refuses
to eat it? It's so pallid
turning to yellow I feel stabbing it
with my fork
would hurt it
or at least be impolite
so I slide the shiny tines beneath a piece
and lift it to my lips
and it's as if I'm eating air
but with a slight afterburn: dust and bone,
privilege and toe-dancing.
So delicate, curling in on itself
in an ultimate self-embrace: fussy, bitter, chaste, clerical
little leaf.

--from "New and Selected Poems of Thomas Lux: 1975-1995"

*Many thanks to Tom Lucky for pointing me toward this poem.