Belgian endive is a chicory root forced to sprout in total darkness
The pale, bitter heads called witloof, 'white leaf', grow from harvested chicory roots left to sprout indoors without light, which keeps the leaves from turning green or opening. Shops often wrap them in blue paper to protect that pallor. The same roadside plant also gives radicchio, a coffee substitute and a sweet fibre called inulin.
Common chicory, Cichorium intybus, is a tough perennial in the daisy family with bright blue flower heads, occasionally white or pink, and stems up to 1.5 metres. Native to Europe, North Africa and western Asia, it travelled to North America with colonists and has naturalised widely in China and Australia. It thrives on roadsides and disturbed ground, prefers limestone and tolerates drought, and genetic work shows that weedy North American chicory partly descends from cultivated varieties. Its folk names include blue sailors and blue dandelion.
The genus name comes from Greek kíkhora, endive, and the Latin intibus is the source of the English word endive, though true endive is a different species, Cichorium endivia. Bitterness comes mainly from two compounds, lactucin and lactucopicrin. Around 1970 researchers found the root can hold up to 20 percent inulin, a starch-like carbohydrate with a tenth of sugar's sweetness that the gut treats as fibre; food makers add it to yogurts and convert it into fructose.
Roasted, ground chicory root has long stretched or replaced coffee, especially during the Great Depression and in Continental Europe during the Second World War. It still flavours Indian filter coffee and New Orleans coffee, and in France a blend of 60 percent chicory and 40 percent coffee is sold as Ricoré. Some brewers add roasted chicory to stouts, or to strong blond Belgian ales to make witloofbier.
Leaves are eaten across the Mediterranean. Apulia pairs wild chicory with fava bean puree, Liguria puts it into preboggion, and Albanians use it like spinach or in byrek fillings; boiling and discarding the water tames the bitterness. Radicchio, the red-leaved type, mellows when grilled, and varieties from Treviso, Verona and Chioggia hold protected geographic status in Italy.
Source: Chicory
