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A great classic, made super easy with a cream and cheese mixture instead of béchamel.
A bit like an old-fashioned gratin. Why not use it with pre-cooked leeks like when you make leek vinaigrette. Along with gratinated onion soup or croque-monsieur, isn’t this one of the legendary dishes of both family and bistro cuisine?
Today I offer you a basic recipe for French cuisine. Most often prepared with béchamel, I offer a variation without, simpler and faster.
The main points? We braise the endives in a pan with butter for more deliciousness, we finish cooking in the oven with a little broth, then we roll the endives with ham, cover them with a mixture of crème fraîche and grated cheese and brown them in the oven. I’ll explain everything to you.
Béchamel or cream?
There are mainly two ways to make ham endives.
Or like here in easy and quick mode with simply thick crème fraîche and grated cheese.
Or with a béchamel sauce instead of cream. Choose a homemade béchamel, in fact I have a recipe here on the blog where I give you all my secrets, quantities and steps for an unfailable béchamel; rather than an industrial béchamel in a pack. Thermomix type cooking robots also make pretty good béchamel. I am personally quite amazed by the rendering of that of my cook-expert.
There are two small variations to the béchamel option: do a mornay sauce (which corresponds to a béchamel to which grated hard cheese such as Comté and egg yolk are added).
Second variant, lighten your béchamel by making a mixture of half béchamel and half fromage blanc.
It’s your choice. I find this version more delicious and smoother with cream, but it’s all a matter of taste. Feel free to adapt this recipe by replacing the cream with béchamel. For the rest, it remains the same.
Here are two tips:
- I recommend that you choose endives that are not too large, white with yellow tipavoid slightly old endives whose yellow tends towards green, they will be more bitter.
- Second advice, take the time for the first step, gentle cooking in a little broth with a little sugarthe equivalent of a pinch per endive.
The main steps 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 – ham balance will not be optimal.
Or just one if the endive with ham is not the main course but one of the elements of your meal.
The recipe is broken down into four steps:
- The first step is to fry the whole endives in a well-buttered pan with a little salt and sugar.
For each endive, there is 1 pinch of sugar and 1 pinch of salt. This is why I kept the unit of measurement in pinch and did not add everything, it is a fairly practical technical memo. - Then on place the endives in a ramekin or ovenproof gratin dish And we wet halfway with a good vegetable broth. You can also use chicken stock. Cover and cook gently in the oven at 180°C. for about thirty minutes.
Cover by covering either with a lid or with aluminum foil so that the endives are well cooked and tender without drying out. We turn the endives regularly so that they soak up the broth well. Once at least halfway through cooking, ideally more often. - We take the endives out of the oven and drain them.. Do not throw away the remaining broth well scented. It can be used in other preparations.
We wrap each endive in ½ or 1 slice of white Paris hamdepending on the size of the ham and endives.
Separately, mix the crème fraîche with the grated cheese. You can possibly replace half of the cream with cottage cheese for a slightly less rich recipe. - We replace the endives in the dish, cover with the cream + cheese mixture and place in the oven at 140°C for 15 to 20 minutes. We turn on the grill function for the last 5 minutes for a nicely browned result.
For an ultra cheezy dish, you can use more cheese than indicated in the recipe by adding some on top before returning to the oven.
Well, if you like very gratin gratin, I invite you to try the potato gratin with cheese, Mont Dore. A delight.
Endives with ham, recipe without béchamel
A great, very delicious classic. I suggest you make these ham endives without béchamel, with instead a mixture of crème fraîche and grated cheese. I also give you advice to prevent the endives from being bitter.
To prevent sleep
Prepare the ham endives
Enjoy your food !
Enjoy