ENDIVE When lettuces, languishing under the summer heat, bolt to seed in the garden rows, instead of making the fine heads we expect, we must be re signed, and turn our attention to the late-sown endive for our autumn salads. So many people do not know the plant, whose thick rosette of narrow, frizzled leaves shade so beautifully from dark green to the creamy-white centre. Tied loosely at the top, for a week or ten days after it reaches full growth, the plant blanches. Blanch ing modifies the tang of dandelion in the leaves; as they whiten and acquire an extremely delicate flavor. No salad is prettier in the bowl than endive; and none is more wholesome as a food and tonic combined.
It was the foreigners that put endive on the benches of American greengrocer shops, and thus taught us to eat what we cannot resist buying because it is so pretty. Europeans use it as a pot herb, and the gardeners have so far improved the varieties that it is in market the year round. There are self-blanching kinds, that head like cabbages when partly grown. A broad-leaved kind is called Escarolle.
When the blossoms appear, they are blue and closely resemble the ray-flowered chicory, a near relative, in the Composite Family.