One of our favorite salad greens, not served often enough in the U.S., is frisée (free-ZAY), curly endive that’s a member of the chicory family. In France, it is formally known as chicorée frisée. (See the different types of endive.)

There are many ways to serve a salade frisée, but a universal favorite is frisée aux lardons, Lyonnaise-style frisée salad.

This salad tops the frisée with a poached egg and lardons—crisp, browned chunks of pork belly—and a sherry vinaigrette. When you cut into it, the runny egg yolk gives the salad a wonderful, silky coat.

Another favorite variation includes crumbled Roquefort cheese or goat cheese with a fan-sliced pear and a few toasted walnut halves. It’s a great flavor layering of bitter from the frisée, salty and smoky from the lardons, sweet from the fruit and tangy vinaigrette.

You can serve salade frisée as a light lunch with crusty rustic bread, as a first course, or with soup for a light dinner.

An Italian touch: burrata cheese. Photo
courtesy Il Mulino Restaurant | NYC.

You can create your own signature frisée salad by adding some of these mix-and-match ingredients:

Fruits, Nuts, Vegetables

Chef Michael Mina varies the frisée salad by
substituting a Scotch egg for the traditional
poached egg. Photo courtesy Michael Mina.

Proteins

 
You can also add a touch of the sea with this side of white anchovy bruschetta.
 
Dressings

You can use a classic vinaigrette or a Dijon vinaigrette, but consider these special variations:

WHAT IS FRISÉE

Frisée is a salad green with distinctive pale, very narrow, curly leaves that grow in a bush-like cluster and are feathery in appearance. The name means “curly.”

Frisée is often included in mesclun and other salad mixes. It is extremely labor-intensive to grow, and therefore one of the costliest salad ingredients.

For that reason, it isn’t a conventional supermarket item, but can be found at upscale markets and purveyors of fine produce.

Frisée has a distinctive flavor and a delightful bitterness—less bitter than its cousins endive and radicchio. Its exotic feathery appearance has great eye appeal. Tips for using it:

 
The chicory genus is rich in fiber, vitamins and minerals, especially folate and vitamins A and K.