Since about 10 years, I love eating Belgian endive. I disliked it until Veerle’s mom sort of made me taste of the result of her cooking skills. Little did I know it would be an instant hit. I expected to taste more of the same endive I knew I did not like, but none of that …
Over the years, I have eaten plenty of it elsewhere. Sometimes it was good, but mostly it was bad. Of course, bad is a very subjective term, but it simply means I did not particularly like it. Some chefs serve a quite hard variety, i.e., not cooked sufficiently. Others serve a watery version and yet others simply fail to grasp how to cook it such that the inner part gets soft. So without further ado, I present a recipe for Belgian endive.
First of all, it is paramount to use soil-grown endive. So none of that water-culture based stuff, as that is either watery when cooked, or bitter. This immediately limits the time during which you can eat endive, i.e., the winter months (in the northern hemisphere). The growing process is quite complex, and I shall refrain from explaining it here, but it takes a lot of work and a lot of time to grow the final product. Also the soil is very important. The best endive comes from the area around Brussels, where the soil is excellent for growing that food. So, you have bought that pack of endive, and you unwrap the crops. Heat a large pot (the endive should be completely submerged), and cover the bottom in a layer of olive oil or butter (the former is more healthy I think). Make sure the fat is very warm before dropping in the crops. To clean the crops, remove the outer leaves, cut off about 0.5 cm off the bottom and the top (so the water can easily get between the leaves). Very important is to make deep (at least 2-3 cm) cuts in the bottom, in a checkerboard pattern. This ensures the lower end of the crop will get soft in time. Bake the crops in the fat, until the leaves start to get dark-brown. Turn over regularly. Make sure the leaves do not go black. When the outside has been browned to your satisfaction, ad warm water until all crops can be fully submerged (they tend to float, so push them down to check). Add two sugar cubes and let the mix stew for at least two hours.
Depending on what you wish to do next, you might want to keep the cooking juice. If you wish to make ham rolls, you should get the endive out of the water and let it leak for at least 30 minutes. If you wish to bake the endive, you should let it leak for about 10 minutes.
So that being said, I hope the next time I get endive on my plate in a restaurant, it will be edible 
