Kitchen Garden Journal

Frisee is a member of the endive/chicory family with finely curled leaves and a slightly bitter flavor.  It is extremely popular in France, and truly one of the most elegant of the salad vegetables.  Growing frisee, however, poses challenges that few growers this side of the Atlantic care to bother with.

Frisee starts its life in the greenhouse with the other head lettuces.  When the plants are 4 weeks old, they are transplanted to the field with other head lettuces.  Here the similarities end.  Lettuce grows fast, sending its tender, brittle leaves rapidly skyward.  Frisee slowly spreads out along the ground, amassing a thick blanket of horizontal leaves.

Just as the plant reaches full size, these leaves are gathered up and tightly bound with an elastic band, excluding sunlight to its newly forming inner leaves.  This makes the frisee more tender and less bitter, and gives it its singular two-tone appearance.  However, this process needs to be done when the leaves are totally dry and temperatures are cool, because otherwise the plants rapidly succumb to a fungus infection called tip burn that causes the heart to rot.  We grow frisee only in the spring and fall for that reason.

Frisee is best served raw with a sharply acid dressing to offset the bitterness. It is used in the classic salade lyonnaise with poached eggs and bacon in a mustard vinaigrette, or with garlic croutons and a lemon-anchovy dressing.  One market customer told me that her mother used it in a warm potato salad with bacon, similar to the one on our arugula page.

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