Curly Endive, Pear and Blue Cheese salad

As I sauntered through the fruit and vegetable store.... there's a place near Pape subway that allegedly is a 24hr fruit and veg store (I say allegedly 'cause I've never tried to procure a carrot at 3 a.m.)... Regardless, I was in that store and I saw a bunch of endive. 

It looked like this





Now this is curly endive

not belgian endive

nor frisée

(now frisée is just baby curly endive)

Anyway, I bought it to make a salad.  Which salad you may ask...

Endive, Pear, Blue cheese salad.

• Tear up your curly endive into bite-sized pieces
• Wash thoroughly and sprinkly with salt and a little bit of sugar (it's a bit bitter but the sweetness from a little sugar and the pear really work on it)
• Slice up your pear and either leave in slices or chop down to matchsticks
• Sprinkle pear on endive
• Crumble up some blue cheese
• Sprinkle on salad
• Drizzle some olive oil
• Take a fork, use chopsticks, fingers work also and eat it

Damn, this is so good.  The endive is a bitter green when it's raw but with the sweetness of the pear and the sharpness of the blue cheese and it's held by the olive oil.  Damn this is good.  Go get some.

Homemade Ricotta

What you need

• milk
• lemon juice

I used whole milk
Put milk in a pot and bring it to almost boiling
Toss in some lemon juice (a couple table spoons) You can also use vinegar
Turn the heat down
Put a couple layers of cheesecloth in a strainer
Strain out the solids
Now you can either keep the liquid and do it again to get the last little bits of cheese out of it.  Or you can use the liquid for another purpose like a soup base, baking or an invigorating health drink.  Or you can just throw it out.
You can squeeze it as much as you want.  The more you squeeze, the firmer it gets.
You can add salt or how about honey for a sweet treatment, rosemary, cayenne... the world is your ricotta.

Pate a Choux Cheese Puffs

I blame Alton Brown.

What you need

• water
• butter
• flour
• cheese - pecorino, parmesean, romano (something hard)
• salt and pepper

Boil 1 cup of water
Toss in 3/4 stick of butter and as much salt as you feel like
Throw in 1 cup of flour and stir util you have a big firm ball (if too liquidy add more flour, if too firm add some water)
Let it cool a bit in the pot
Crack in one egg and work it in.
Crack in a second egg and work it in.
Add some grated peccorino, parmesean, romano, all three, or any hard cheese you feel like. And some pepper.
Now, you can either stuff this mix into a piping bag and squeeze out your profiteroles onto some parchment paper
Or, stuff it into a freezer bag, slice off a corner and squeeze away
Or, put some water in a bowl and with very wet fingers grab little balls of it and place on some parchment
They should be kinda round and smooth out the tops or any little pointy bits will burn
Preheat an over to 425 and toss in when it's at temperature
Five minutes later turn down to 350
When they look purdy they're done

And then you eat them all.  As Anne said, "These won't keep so we might as well finish them off."