This is the latest in an ongoing guest series brought to you by Southborough’s Culinary Underground. This week Chef Lori shares a quick and delicious recipe that features a favorite wintertime fruit.
(Photo via Flickr)
With the temperatures finally dropping into the single digits, there’s not much in the market that is fresh and local in the fruit ‘n vegetable department. In a way, that’s good: the bitter cold doesn’t make me crave tossed salad. But it’s also bad; my post-holiday eating plan is to cut the calories – you know what I’m talking about! Fresh fruits and veggies are the best way to accomplish that, but what’s a Massachusetts girl to do?
After years in New England, my definition of “local” has expanded to “anything produced along the Eastern seaboard,” from Nova Scotia to Florida. I’ll pass on the red grapes from Chile and those red plastic things that resemble tomatoes, and reach for citrus fruit. Winter is the season for grapefruit, oranges, clementines, satsumas, and the like, all from the groves of the Sunshine State. Receiving a box of giant red grapefruit from snowbirds I know is the ultimate gift!
But these yummy fruits don’t just make an appearance at breakfast around here. I save a lot of them for salads. Their color and astringency are perfect in both tossed and composed salads, and I like to mix them with veggies for maximum effect.
Since I’m a fan of fresh fennel, the pairing of sliced fennel bulb and seedless oranges is a frequent side salad during the winter. Bonus: it takes just minutes to prepare. Fresh fennel is an autumn-winter veggie, so it’s seasonal and stores well in the fridge. It has a light, cool, faint flavor of anise, and the flesh is nice and crunchy.
Fennel and Orange Salad
(4 servings)
2 fennel bulbs
4 large oranges
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Juice from the oranges
Coarsely chopped fresh parsley
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper
Remove the tops from the fennel (they make a nice addition to fish stock). Halve and core the fennel, then slice thinly.
Cut a small slice from the top and bottom of each orange. Use a knife to follow the curve of the fruit, slicing away the rind and the white pith (which is bitter). Slice the orange into rounds over a bowl; reserve the juice.
Arrange the sliced fennel and sliced oranges on a serving platter. Whisk together the olive oil and reserved orange juice. Drizzle over the salad, sprinkle with parsley, and season generously with salt and pepper.
