Crisp fall salad with sliced endive, walnuts, chopped pear, and blue cheese.
Endive is one of my guilty pleasures. It’s more expensive than regular lettuce, but it’s so delicate, and has such a wonderful, just lightly bitter flavor, I just can’t resist a splurge once in a while.
This is a quick and easy endive salad recipe, chopped endive tossed with chopped pears, walnuts, and crumbled gorgonzola, and drizzled with oil and vinegar. Perfect for the fall!
If you don’t have access to endive, feel free to substitute butter lettuce. Some of the other lettuces in the chicory family would work as well—curly endive, escarole, frisee, radicchio.
By the way, my French friends in the area insist that the endive we grow here in Northern California is less bitter, and more exquisite than what you find in Europe. So enjoy!
Endive Salad with Walnuts, Pears, and Gorgonzola Recipe
- Prep time: 10 minutes
- Yield: Serves 2 to 3
This recipe is presented as a salad, but you could also chop the pears and walnuts more finely, and place with some crumbled blue cheese in the endive leaves, like filling little boats, for appetizers.
Ingredients
- 3 endive heads, sliced first lengthwise, then crosswise in 1/2-inch slices
- 2 tablespoons chopped walnuts
- 2 tablespoons crumbled gorgonzola or other blue cheese
- 1 Bartlett pear, cored and chopped
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 2 teaspoons cider vinegar (balsamic is good too)
- Sprinkle of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
Method
1 Place the chopped endive in a large bowl. Add the walnuts, crumbled gorgonzola, and chopped pears. Toss to combine.
2 Drizzle olive over the salad. Drizzle cider vinegar over the salad. Toss to combine.
Season to taste with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Serve immediately.
Links:
Endive.com – The story, the man from Sacramento, and the farm behind California grown endive.
