This is not your every day salad. It is inspired by a salad I used to make 50+ times a night at a sweet French restaurant in Vancouver in my late teens/early twenties. Every ingredient spoke to me and I literally craved it when I wasn’t at work. It wasn’t until much later that I realized that unlike the other things I was grazing on all night at work (leftover duck fat pomme rissolées and a staff jar of nutella, poorly hidden on the pastry shelf), this salad alone is what gave me the energy I needed to get through a long service every night.
Belgian endive (a form of chicory) also known as witloof (white leaf) is a pale, torpedo-shaped….lettuce option. It is pale because it doesn’t see the light of day, so it doesn’t form chlorophyll. Even at the grocery story, you’ll often find it hiding in the box it came in. If you work for a French chef, you will get in trouble for not putting the lid back on the box when you grab a handful of them from the walk-in mid-service. They like it dark.