FALL SALAD

Endives, apples, walnuts salad, with a walnut oil and hard cider vinegar dressing

With Belgian Endives, Raddichio, Treviso

The long sobs of autumn's violins wound my heart with a monotonous languor (Paul Verlaine)

Fall weather, fall mood, fall ingredients?

I would like to share a very simple recipe that my mom used to prepare. It is totally adapted to the season, vibrant and crispy as the trees today. It’s just a very basic salad, but it is for me the synonym of autumn (although I continue to prepare it all winter long). Just a salad of (Belgian) endives, with walnuts and apples.
Here, on top of the Belgian endives, the salad made a detour in Italy with Treviso and Radicchio leaves. With those red onions and the Empire tart apple, the red was on.

Cut the endives in slices (but any other way is OK), crush very roughly the walnuts previously toasted in a tiny bit of walnut oil, leaving some entire halves, and chop the apple in dices. I prefer tart and crispy apples, but it is a question of taste.

The dressing includes walnut oil and cider vinegar (the perfect bridge with the salad’s ingredients), as well as Dijon mustard à l’ancienne (the one with the mustard seeds). Prepare it like you would do with a mayonnaise (but without eggs), i.e. take a tbsp. of mustard and add progressively the walnut oil while whisking the whole, till obtaining a mayonnaise-like or creamy texture (thus, it will coat all the ingredients), add the vinegar, salt and pepper.
Toss everything together. It’s better to do it 5 minutes before serving maximum, otherwise it will become a bit saggy.

You can also add (unpasteurized) Comté or other similar cheeses. Personally, I prefer without cheese, to preserve the whole crispiness of the salad, but I know that American people like to add cheese everywhere;).

To serve either with a glass of chilled hard cider or a glass of Alsace’s Gewurztraminer...

I should say that every time I serve this salad to friends, or I bring it to a party, it is very successful… It's a perfect lunch, or a very refreshing dinner starter, before, for instance, a very American butternut squash roasted with walnut oil, walnuts, maple syrup, and why not a little bit of slightly stewed (“compotées”) apples (the bridge again).

Yes, this is definitively fall!

Served in an apple, with Belgian Endives, Raddichio, Chestnut, Almond Oil

The "Classic"

Endive Salad, Walnut oil roasted croutons, hard cider diluted vinaigrette