Fennel Salad

Not sure how many of you are familiar with fennel but it is an excellent vegetable to cook with. Eaten raw it has a beautiful licorice taste without the actual licorish-ness of the candy. Once it is cooked, it softens and becomes just the right kind of sweet. I usually roast it in the oven until the edges crisp up and the thicker flesh starts caramelizing, but I always see recipes that call for a fennel/orange combination so I decided to try it. Granted, I didn’t actually follow a recipe when making mine and sort of winged it, but it still came out refreshing and eatable.

Here’s the no-cook recipe (served 2):

1 fennel bulb

handful of chopped purple onion strands

1 orange

½ teaspoon of salt

half a lemon

drizzle of olive oil

Cut the green top, bottom and small core of the fennel bulb off so that only the white bulb is left over. You are basically prepping the fennel. Cut the bulb in half and slice each half into thin strips. Place the fennel strips on a platter. Cut the top and bottom of the orange so that it can sit up on its own. Slide the knife along the sides of the orange, cutting away the skin and white pith. You want to peel the orange while keeping it intact. Once you have cut away all the skin and pith, hold the orange in one hand while you cut out the segments slowly. Do this over the platter with the fennel so the juices run onto the fennel. Let the cut orange segments fall over the fennel. Once all the segments are cut out, squeeze the remaining orange membranes to release any juices. Scatter the onion strands over the fennel and orange and tear a few fennel fronds (from the green leafy top of the fennel) to sprinkle over the salad. Squeeze the lemon over the salad, drizzle with a bit of olive oil, season with salt and let sit for 5-10 minutes to develop the flavors. Enjoy any time of day!