Belgian Endive with Blue Cheese Spread

Author Notes

Is this a recipe or just an after thought?

I was looking for a way to add a light-ish salad-like appetizer to a Thanksgiving menu a few years ago as a foil to the heavier food to come. I had years ago (like thirty... or is it forty? oh dear.) made a ridiculously fussy, somewhat silly, but memorable recipe of endive and gorgonzola where you separated the leaves of the endive and then reconstructed it with some kind of gorgonzola based mixture between the leaves. You then sliced through making very pretty flower-like rounds. But, well, never again.

Serving endive leaves as crackers and making a spread of ricotta and roquefort seemed all these years later more likely to happen.... and it did.. and it is refreshingly simple to make and pretty refreshingly good to eat. It has become a fall-back recipe for hastily thrown together cocktail parties or pot lucks.

I'm sure there are dozens of variations.... other cheeses, other herbs, other spices. —Jane Fordyce