Endive salad boats with apple, blue cheese, bacon & walnuts

These endive salad boats with apple, blue cheese, bacon, and walnuts are crunchy and delicious. They’re a perfect light summer appetizer or snack, and I drizzle them with my best-ever maple vinaigrette for a pop of sweetness.

Commonly known as Belgian endive or Chicory, this crunchy salad leaf is also known as Witlof. It is pale in colour with a slightly bitter and nutty flavour and is super crunchy. You can eat it raw or cooked, but since it’s summer, I wanted to make a salad with lots of different elements.

Vibrant Granny Smith apples, fennel and celery make up the vegetable component, and creamy blue cheese and crispy bacon the savoury and salty part. A few chopped-up walnuts add a lovely crunch and they go so well with everything else here. Think Waldorf salad. I drizzled over my all-time favourite maple vinaigrette dressing (from my pear and blue cheese salad) which added sweetness to offset the bitterness.

I met the farmer who grew this vegetable in South Africa and discovered it involves two stages. The root is bigger than the leafy head and has to be planted for a second stage and kept in the dark to prevent chlorophyll development in the leaves.

All done hydroponically, this is not a simple plant to grow. I also ate it cooked for the first time in a traditional Belgian dish where it’s wrapped in pancetta braised to buttery deliciousness and then smothered in a cheesy sauce. So interesting, and this dish can be found on the Den Anker menu in winter months. 

The Witlof leaves when picked off their conical-shaped core form the perfect boat-like shape to hold the salad in, making it good for finger food to serve at a party or a BBQ. It’s also kind of like a salad in a salad taco. 

I used a Danish-style blue, but any great-tasting creamy blue such as Gorgonzola will work wonderfully too.

The quantities in the dressing recipe make a little more than is required, but it’s a lovely dressing to use on other salads. 

A few of my other salads you might like

crunchy green salad with goat cheese and mixed seed praline

slow-roasted tomatoes with mozzarella and basil

green bean & pea salad with lashings of parmesan

Recipe – serves 4 – 6 people as a side

Endive salad boats with apple, blue cheese, bacon & walnuts

Light and summery endive salad boats with apple, blue cheese, bacon & walnuts.

Print Recipe

Prep Time:10 minutes mins

Cook Time:5 minutes mins

Ingredients

• 1 head of Witlof / Endive
• 1 ¾ cups Granny Smith apples cut into thin match sticks
• ¼ cup finely shaved fennel
• ¼ cup finely diced celery
• 3 – 4 rashers of bacon finely chopped and fried until crispy
• About 50gms creamy blue cheese crumbled
• Small handful of walnuts chopped

Dressing

• 60 ml olive oil
• 30 ml good quality white wine vinegar
• 20 ml maple syrup 1 Tbs + 1 tsp
• ½ tsp Dijon
• pinch of sea salt flakes

Instructions

• Get all your salad components ready.
• Fry the bacon drain on kitchen paper and chop up all the salad ingredients.
• Whisk all the dressing ingredients together until emulsified.
• Just before you are ready to serve, peel away the endive leaves. Toss the apple, celery and fennel together with half the chopped nuts. Pour over enough dressing to coat.
• Spoon the dressed salad into the endive leaves and arrange these on a platter or large serving plate.
• Sprinkle over the crumbled blue cheese, crispy bacon, and the remainder of the nuts.
• Drizzle a little more dressing over the salad boats and serve immediately.

Notes

Prepare the elements in advance and keep the dressing separate.

Any leftover salad dressing can be used for other salads.

Servings: 4

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