Where should we start with the lowdown on endive?

That it's one very cool little vegetable? That it's both bitter and sweet, and is good raw in salads or cooked in main dishes? That it appears nowhere in nature? That it's actually grown in two stages, one of which is indoors – in the dark?

That there's only one farmer in the entire United States who dares to grow it? That he grew up in Carmichael? That he didn't turn and run when he found out, at 18, that no one else in the United States was crazy enough to try to grow it?

No, before we get to all that, what you really need to know about endive – if you're going to order it at a restaurant, ask for it at the grocery store or tell your foodie friends how it's your new favorite ingredient – is how to pronounce it.

Cross your arms, look in the mirror and make the face of the snootiest, most dismissive French gourmand you can possibly imagine – like Martha Stewart when she says "fahn-TAHS-tic" – then dial it back just a smidge.

That's right, it's "on-deev."

Endive is grown in the Sacramento River Delta town of Rio Vista and pretty much nowhere else this side of Belgium, where it was "discovered" accidentally around 1830. That's when a Belgian man left some chicory roots in his cellar that winter and forgot about them until spring. The cellar warmed up. The chicory sprouted.

"He saw this scraggly sprout on the chicory root. He broke it off and tasted it. It was succulent, it was fresh, it was somewhat bitter," said Rich Collins, founder of California Vegetable Specialties in Rio Vista. "From that accidental discovery, they discovered this ability to produce endive."

By the time the Belgians perfected the process over the next 70 years, Belgian endive had become a prized – and pricey – bit of produce. Its leaves are white and tender, and the mild bitterness is balanced with a subtle nutty sweetness. It looks like nothing else, tastes like nothing else and, in the United States, it has become one of those highly sought-after ingredients in recent years.

The endive story in this country is really the story of Collins, happenstance, stubbornness, determination and smarts. In the late 1970s, Collins was a Carmichael teenager who had a 1-acre vegetable garden in his neighborhood. He dreamed of being a farmer even though his parents had no background in agriculture – they were actually from San Francisco.

To make ends meet, Collins worked as a dishwasher at a fine dining restaurant called Restaurant LaSalle, where the chef was the highly regarded Dick Vickers. One night, during a VIP dinner, the chef held up this vegetable shaped like a small missile. On the menu was braised endive. The endive in the chef's hand was white and oddly beautiful.

Collins had never seen it before, had never heard of it and, being the dishwasher, he never got to taste it that night. But the next day, he bought some seeds and tried to grow it.

"It failed miserably," he said with a shrug.

Yet, something about the pursuit fascinated him. He tried and failed and tried and failed and then began to fail a little less. It was 10 years before he mastered the art of growing the stuff.

Endive is actually what happens when a farmer manipulates chicory, which is a root and a weed. Chicory is plentiful throughout the area, and its brilliant blue flowers can be spotted along rural roadways. Donner Summit? New York City? Chicory has been spotted there, too.

Each fall at the Rio Vista facility, the chicory is harvested. A special machine equipped with sensors clips the roots just below the soil level. These 6-inch pieces look like an extra-thick carrot.

Then they're placed in cold storage that makes the plant feel it is hunkering down for a long winter in northern Europe.

"I sometimes cringe when I say this, but endive is not a natural product because it does not exist in nature," Collins said.

After the cold storage, or dormant stage, the roots are placed in shallow tubs of water and stacked indoors in a large warehouse under carefully controlled conditions.

This is where it gets weird. Inside that room are thick black curtains 22 feet high that keep out any hint of light – light would make the leaves turn green, and that would not only spoil the aesthetics, it would alter the taste and make it more bitter. This is called the "forcing room" where endive comes to life.

The Rio Vista farm grows chicory/endive on 250 acres, with 40 acres grown organically. Recipes are plentiful and varied, and scores of them can be found at the farm's website, www.endive. com.

Standing in the forcing room, Collins pulled back one of the thick curtains to reveal the stacks of endive, some of which were a day or two from being picked, packed up and shipped out.

"We're a farm. We just happen to farm in the dark," Collins told a group of food writers during a recent tour of the facilities.

These days, the farm is a multimillion-dollar operation. About 60 percent of the business is with restaurants and the rest is retail.

Competitors? There aren't any. If you buy domestic endive at your local grocery store or order it at your favorite restaurant, it was grown in Rio Vista – once out in the field and once again in the dark.

What you need to know about endive

• Member of the chicory family, which includes radicchio, escarole and curly endive.

• Has a sweet, nutty flavor with a mild bitterness.

• Good served raw or cooked.

• It's grown twice: 150 days in the field and 20 to 28 days in dark forcing rooms.

• Look for smooth, plump, crisp, firm heads that are as pale as possible.

• Store it wrapped in a damp paper towel inside a plastic bag. It'll last 10 to 14 days.

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