Chicory with ham and cheese from the oven

[melilot-hill.livejournal.com]

While I was preparing dinner I thought it could very well be something Hobbits would eat. So I decided to post it here.


Ingredients for two persons
500 grams chicory
8 slices of ham
100 grams grated cheese
crumbled zwieback (I hope this is the correct translation; I mean double baked bread) but I guess you can also use breadcrumbs
a little butter or olive oil

Preheat the oven to 220 Celsius. Mix the grated cheese and the crumbled zwieback.
Remove the outer leaves of the chicory and take out the hard and bitter core. Blanch the chicory for a couple of minutes. Take the chicory out of the pan and roll them into slices of ham and put them in an oven dish. Put the grated cheese on top of the ham-chicory rolls and put some butter or olive oil on top of that. Heat in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Let it cool for a few minutes before serving. I always eat it with mashed potatoes.

Comments

[sila-lumenn.livejournal.com]

This sounds very interesting. I've never cooked with chicory. In the US, the ground root is used in Cajun style coffee and the leaves are sometimes used as a salad green. Which part of the chicory do you use?

Zwieback is sold here as hard toast for teething babies to chew on. Most likely I would use bread crumbs that have been toasted instead.

[melilot-hill.livejournal.com]

We use the whole head (is that the right word?, if not see picture below). You have to take of the outer leaves to clean. I always cut it in two to take out the hard "core" because that is very bitter. After blanching the chicory I roll every "half" in a slice of ham.



I'm not sure Zwieback is the right translation. I think "beschuit" (as it is called here) is a Dutch thing. I put in a picture so you can see if it's the same or not.


When a baby is born, the parents always give "beschuit met muisjes" ("muisjes" means "little mice" but in this case it is also "aniseed comfits") to the visitors (again with picture).