But the Italians would tell you about chicory from Verona or chicory from Treviso. Although they like chicory from Catalonia, which they call puntarelle, whose leaves are somewhat reminiscent of dandelion leaves and which they eat boiled.
Known to the Romans, made “drinkable” by the Dutch and appreciated by Louis XIV…
It must be said that the Romans already consumed chicory, as we know from Pliny the Elder who speaks of it in his natural history, therefore in the 1st century after Jesus Christ, shortly before the eruption of Vesuvius which cost him his life as well than to the inhabitants of Pompeii. For the chicory we drink, we have to cross the Alps and go back to the Low Countries and the 17th century.
It was at this time that the Dutch had the idea of roasting the root a little, like that to see, and they noticed that it made it less bitter. It was the 19th century that made it a drink for breakfast. While Napoleon decreed the blockade of England and its colonies, coffee ran out very quickly since it came from the English islands, and when it came from the French colonies the boats were attacked by the English. The French of 1806 being already big fans of coffee, they invented making a drink by taking up the idea of roasting chicory. Drink that we will find again during the war with the lack of coffee during the occupation. The process discovered in the 19th century made it possible to make soluble chicory powder and many of you consume it in the morning, for example.
In the kitchen, you can put chicory in a lot of dishes.
For example in a floating island since it has a slight taste of caramel, in a rice cake, in a cake with whiskey or even in biscuits. Some have it accompany the calf. On the health side, it is rich in fiber, it is low in calories, it is the best for the diet, and it is light in caffeine if you have a sensitive heart. Cooking is done with lots of ingredients, like chicory, but it is done above all with heart.