On finding an Endive

Hwsgo suggested that I try the Endives au Gratin (p89) as my first recipe. I agreed, then ran off to look up endive in the dictionary. It's a type of daisy: yes, really. Except it looks very much like chicory to me. Except the chicory in wikipedia looks like a daisy. Somehow in my web search, I formed the belief that an endive was a big green curly football of a plant, as seen in a good greengrocers over the weekend. And off I went to Tescos to look for it.

No dice. Nothing in the vegetable section that was big green and curly and labelled as an endive (although I was nearly desperate enough to reclassify some of the winter greens). But aha! I was in a supermarket and had a cookbook in my hand (and was ready to explain at the tills that it wasn't sold by them honest). All I had to do was find an ingredient, then look it up and voila - all bar the cooking, an instant win on the supper front. I found a partridge. I've tracked down several good game dealers near me this winter, and hwsgo and I have eaten several pheasants in the name of good cooking, but I hadn't seen any partridges yet and this one wasn't going to get away (being dead and wingless would help with not getting away, but it wasn't going to get away from me). And to my second problem: no partridges in the cookbook. Chicken, pigeon, grouse, rabbit, but no partridge. Tonight, I was going to have to eat off-piste again.

I called my local oracle and told him about my tribulations. He suggested Waitrose for the endives, and using a pigeon recipe for the partridge; specifically, the roast pigeon with braised lettuce, peas and bacon from page 155. It was too late to go shopping again, so I raided the fridge, chopped two fennel bulbs into quarters in a roasting dish, poured milk and flaked parmesan and laid three slices of home-cured bacon (Lingfield butchers) over the top, put the dish into a 200C oven (200C so that I could put some part-bake rolls in too) and promptly forgot about it whilst I watched television. Some time later I remembered to go into the kitchen and this became supper. Tomorrow, the ingredient hunt continues.