Endives with ham, recipe gratin in the oven without béchamel

A great classic, made ultra easy with a cream and cheese mixture instead of Béchamel.

A bit like an old -fashioned gratin. To be declined why not with leeks prepares like when you make vinaigrette leeks. With the gratin onion soup or the croque-monsieur isn’t that one of the legendary dishes of both family and bistro?

I offer you today a basic recipe for French cuisine. Most often prepared with béchamel, I offer you a variant without, simpler and faster.

The main lines? We embark the endives in a pan with butter for more delicacy, we finish cooking in the oven with a small broth, then winds the endives of ham, covers them with a fresh cream and grated cheese mixture and get baked. I explain everything to you.

Béchamel or cream?

There are mainly two ways to make endives in ham.

Either as here in easy and easy mode with simply thick crème fraîche and grated cheese.

Either with a béchamel instead of the cream. Favor a house béchamel, moreover I have a recipe here on the blog where I give you all my secrets, quantities and steps for an unbearable béchamel; Rather than industrial béchamel in a pack. The thermomix type cooks also make Béchamel rather not bad. I am personally rather amazed by the rendering of that of my cook-expert.

There are two small variants at the Béchamel option: do A Mornay sauce (which corresponds to a béchamel in which we add grated hard -type cheese type county and egg yolk).
Second variant, Lick your Béchamel By making a mixture half béchamel and half cheese blanc.

It’s your choice. I find this version more delicious and more creamy with cream, but everything is a matter of taste. Do not hesitate to adapt this recipe by replacing the cream with béchamel. For the rest, it remains identical.

Here are two tips:

1. I recommend that you Choose endives not too big,, White in color at the end yellowAvoid the somewhat old endives whose yellow shoots green green, they will be more bitter.
2. Second advice, Take the time of the first step, soft cooking in a little broth with a little sugarthe equivalent of a pinch per endive.

The main stages of the recipe

There are 2 endives per person : two medium -sized endives per person for a complete dish.
You can count 3 if they are small but the endive balance – ham will not be optimum.
Or only one if the ham endive is not the main dish but in elements of your meal.

The recipe breaks down in four stages:

1. The first step is Fry the whole endives in a well buttered pan With a little salt and sugar.
   For each endive, there are 1 pinch of sugar and 1 pinch of salt. This is why I kept the unit of measurement in pinch and did not add it all, it is a fairly practical technique means.
2. Then on Place the endives in a ramekin or baked gratin dish And We get wet halfway up with a good vegetable broth. We also manage to use poultry broth. We covers and cook gently in the oven at 180 ° C for around thirty minutes.
   Covered by covering either a lid or aluminum foil so that the endives are well cooked with muffled and tender without drying out. We return the endives regularly so that they are changing well with the broth. Once at least halfway through cooking, ideally more often.
3. We take the endives out of the oven and we drain them. Do not throw the rest of the broth Well fragrant. It can be used in other preparations.
   Each endive is wrapped in ½ or 1 slice of white ham from Parisdepending on the size of the ham and endives.
   Apart from mixing the crème fraîche with the grated cheese. You can possibly replace half of the cream with cottage cheese for a slightly less rich recipe.
4. The endives are replaced in the dish, cover with cream + cheese preparation and bake at 140 ° C for 15 to 20 minutes. We put the grill function the last 5 minutes for a well -gratinated rendering.
   For an ultra cheezy dish, you can put more cheese than indicated on the recipe by adding on the top before putting in the oven.

Well, if you like very gratin gratin, I invite you to test the cheese potato gratin, Mont Dore. A delight.