- Hey guys, welcome to the final week
of our New Year, New Dinner collaboration series.
I hope you have enjoyed it as much as I have.
I certainly have gotten some great ideas for dinner
working with all of these wonderful YouTube channels.
And this week, I wanna introduce you to a woman
I have admired for years, Stacie Billis of One Hungry Mama.
I first met Stacie years ago when she started her food blog
and I have to say, I have always been impressed
by her recipe and her approach to family dinners.
Her ideas are simple and elegant
and always look so delicious.
The other great thing is they're the kind of recipes
that you really can just feed everybody,
even those picky palates.
So if you don't already know her, she now is on YouTube,
and you can head on over there, subscribe to her channel,
and see some of her amazing family friendly dishes.
- Hi everyone, it's Stacie from One Hungry Mama
with an invitation to come visit me at my channel.
I've got tons of quick tips and easy, stress-free recipes
for you to cook one meal that the whole family will love.
And be sure to subscribe to get your weekly inspiration.
I can't wait to see you here.
Bye.
- So in the spirit of coming up
with family friendly meals that everyone will love,
Stacie and I are gonna show you two options.
For my part, I'm gonna share with you
one of my favorite family meals,
a dish that my husband grew up with in France,
and it was one of the first things he made me try
when we visited there years ago,
and it is called endive bechamel.
It is a delicious family friendly meal
that's perfect for this type of weather.
It's warm and gooey and delicious and completely comforting.
So after my video is done,
be sure to head to Stacie's channel,
and she's gonna show you how to make
a really delicious turkey taco salad.
It's fun, it's healthy, and it's interactive
for kids of all ages.
So let me show you how to make one of my favorite
family friendly meals, endive bechamel.
So the foundation for this dish are some endive.
Now, a lot of people may use these for salads.
They're great for that, just to throw in
to have a little bit of crunch,
but endive is also wonderful if you cook it.
It actually takes the bitterness down
and it becomes really silky smooth,
and you can do all different kinds of things with it,
and what we're gonna do is create
a beautiful bechamel sauce,
top it with some cheese, and bake it,
and you're gonna end up with a really delicious dish.
Now, I'll also say this.
If you don't eat meat, you can make this vegetarian
very easily by just leaving out the ham.
It would also make a great side dish that way, as well.
So the first thing we wanna do is core our endive,
because the inside does get a little bit tough,
and we wanna cut that part out.
So you're just gonna take your knife
and make a simple upside down V in the bottom of each one.
You don't wanna cut too much,
because then those leaves will start to fall off,
so it's kind of the balance between getting the core out
and making sure the endive stays intact.
Then we're gonna take a nine by 14 casserole dish,
we're gonna grease it with some butter,
and then we're gonna take these endive
and we're gonna put them in the casserole
and just roast them for 15 minutes
at 375 degrees fahrenheit.
Now, I will say this.
There are a lot of variations on this recipe.
It's a recipe that's been around for generations,
and some people like to parboil the endive first.
Basically what you're trying to do
is just give them a head start
so that when they're done and baked,
they're not too tough in the center.
You do want them to get really sort of silky smooth,
and that does take a lot of cooking time,
so you can either parboil for 10 minutes
or you can pop them in the oven for 15 minutes.
I like the oven technique better
because then you don't have to wait
while that endive sort of drains and dries.
So while your endive are in the oven roasting,
we can get on with making the bechamel sauce,
and it's a really simply technique.
All you're gonna do is take out a large skillet,
or you could use a saucepan.
I like the skillet, I think it's a little easier that way.
And you're gonna melt five tablespoons of butter
and once that butter is nice and foamy,
you're then gonna add a quarter cup of flour
and just whisk it up until you have
kind of like a paste on your hands.
And then you wanna cook that paste on a medium low
for about a minute, just to kind of cook that flour a bit.
And then slowly you're gonna add three cups of milk,
whisking all the while just to combine that flour
and turn it into a sauce,
and then you're gonna turn your heat up
a little bit to like medium high,
because we wanna activate that flour
and start thickening our sauce,
and we're gonna let that go for anywhere
from three to four minutes.
Then once we have our nice sauce on our hands,
then we are going to season it.
You're gonna add a teaspoon of salt,
a little bit of freshly cracked pepper,
a pinch of nutmeg.
It's very traditional for bechamel
to have a little bit of nutmeg,
but if you don't have it on hand,
it's not gonna destroy the dish, so you could leave it out.
And then at this stage, I do like to add
two cloves of minced garlic.
Now, this is not very traditional for bechamel,
but I really like to do it because I find
it gives the sauce great flavor and depth,
but if you're not a garlic person, you could leave it out.
Then you're just gonna whisk that all up
and then your sauce is ready to go.
So you can remove that from the heat, let it cool slightly,
then we're gonna go back to our endive,
which at this point are probably cool enough to handle,
and then we're gonna take piece of black forest ham
and wrap it around the endive,
and that will help keep it intact as it cooks,
and also just kind of looks pretty that way
when it's all said and done,
and just arrange it so they all fit in a single layer.
You don't wanna put them on top of each other.
Then once all your endive are nice and wrapped up,
you can then go back to your bechamel sauce
and pour it all over the top,
just making sure everything's evenly distributed,
and now comes the cheese, the best part.
So then you're gonna take a cup of shredded gruyere cheese
and sprinkle it all over the top of the endive,
making sure you are getting some on the ham
because that's gonna create that beautiful gratin
that is so associated with endive bechamel.
Now, if you wanted to do this ahead of time,
you could stop right here, cover this with foil,
put it in your fridge,
and then when you come home from work or school,
pop it in the oven and it is ready to go.
Then you're gonna take your casserole,
put it back in that 375 degree oven,
and you're going to bake for anywhere from 35 to 40 minutes,
just until that bechamel sauce is bubbling
and that cheese is nice and golden brown.
Then when it's done, I love to serve this
just oven to table and let everybody dig in.
And then I like to serve this dish
with a nice tossed salad with a mustardy vinaigrette,
and I will leave you that recipe in the description.
I find this dish is pretty rich so that it pairs
really nicely with something really refreshing,
like a nice tossed salad.
I hope you guys give this one a try
and let me know what you think,
and I also hope you head on over
to Stacie's channel, subscribe,
check out all of her wonderful family friendly recipes,
and certainly try that beautiful looking turkey taco salad.
I think that would be another winner
for a great weeknight meal.
All right, you guys, I'm gonna leave you
with some of her favorite recipes from her channel,
recipes that I think you'll love as much as I do,
and I will see you back here next week,
where we are gonna be really naughty
and head into some chocolate.
We're gonna do some things for Valentine's Day
that I think you guys will really love.
Until then, bye.
(jazzy uptempo music)