Chronicles of Supermarket Humiliation

I would like to share two things with you:

1. Endive, the leafy green vegetable, commonly served with pears is pronounced N Dive.
2. Endive, the leafy green vegetable, commonly served with pears is not a part of the lettuce family. It is a part of the daisy family.

I share these two items with you in an effort to spare you from the public humiliation I encountered as I was purchasing ingredients for tonight’s dinner.I have been pronouncing endive, en-deev my whole adult life. Granted that is only three or so years, BUT STILL. Yesterday as I was purchasing my endive, the cashier did not know what it was called. She asked me, I said en-deev, she asked me to spell it, so I spelled it. She still couldn’t find it so naturally she proceeds to yell across all of the checkout lines, holding up my endive as if it were some artifact from another century and shouting about how this girl (me) wants to buy this stuff she is calling en-deev. Apparently there was no record of them even carrying endive — I went very quickly from feeling like a hella classy Julia Child to a super sneak who was trying to purchase bootleg lettuce from the streets of Riverside. After several minutes of back and forth, and my face becoming perpetually darker shades of red, I was able to purchase my greens. THANK GOODNESS.

Tonight, with the traumatic grocery store incident behind me, I decided to shift gears a little bit. Instead of making the portobello and endive salad like originally planned, I made it exponentially better by adding a little cheese and bread and turning it into a portobello burger! My first one ever.

I grilled the endive in my grill pan to take out some of the bitterness and then tossed it with arugula and a light balsamic dressing. I toasted some ciabatta and added mozzarella (because why not?) and grilled up my portobello. I think all of this took MAXIMUM 20 minutes so it was absolutely a quick and easy weeknight meal.

The Deats:

Portobello Burger
Serves: 1
Total Time: 20 minutes

1 portobello mushroom cap
3 – 5 leaves of endive
Arugula
Fresh mozzarella
1 ciabatta roll
Olive oil
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Heat your grill pan until it is smoking. In the meantime, brush your portobello mushroom and endive with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place your portobello, gills up and place your endive leaves face down in the grill pan. Allow to cook until the juices have been released from the portobello and the endive leaves are wilted. When the top of the portobello has been cooked, flip it over and cook the gills side for another 3 -5 minutes – until it is fragrant.

In a broiler, toast your ciabatta roll and melt the desired amount of mozzarella cheese onto the bottom half of your bread. In a small bowl, whisk together 1 tablespoon each of olive oil and balsamic vinegar with salt and pepper. When your endive is done cooking, toss it with a generous handful of arugula and your balsamic dressing.

Stack your burger! First comes the bottom half of the bread (with the mozz), then the portobello mushroom, then the greens mixture, and then your top half of the roll! Plate, enjoy, and feel half healthy!