fennel and orange salad
crisp bulbs and juicy oranges as an antidote to the winter grey
Welcome to mama eats, a twice-weekly newsletter inspired by a simple + seasonal home life. This week’s post, a recipe for fennel salad, is free to all readers. I try to provide as much free content as possible, however, this newsletter is a labor of love and I am a busy mother of three. If you have the means and find value in what I share, please consider becoming a paid subscriber, which also gives you the benefit of access to the growing archive (posts over a month old).
We are right in the middle of January- short days and long evenings, the afternoons spent chasing the last bit of daylight as the sun slips away. These cold, dark evenings of midwinter call for stout sustenance, things laced with plenty of butter and olive oil, steaming bowls of pasta cushioning us against the chill. As a counterpoint, some kind of acidity, freshness, crispness is very nice- as I wrote in my January at the market post, I believe salads are essential this time of year, not so much for health as for mental buoying against the grey and dark days. The color, the freshness and shape of beautiful vegetables reminding us that spring and summer are coming again, the acid brightening the meal and the palate.
In my view, there is nothing so nice as a fennel and orange salad through January and February. The crisp sweetness of the fennel bulb, its feathery green fronds offering some verdant herbal notes, marrying with the sweet acidity of juicy, bright orange rounds of citrus. Plenty of good olive oil and salt to season, perhaps a handful of inky oil-cured black olives or crisp half moons of onion to sharpen the flavors. There are many variations- Elizabeth David in her book Italian Food reccomends fennel with radish, lemon, and olive oil; Rebecca May Johnson makes a very fresh one with shallot, limes, and green chili. In the autumn before oranges are ready, I use pomegranate, its deep red arils confetti against the pale fennel. At its most elemental, and the way my grandparents always served it, its just very fresh fennel, very good green olive oil, and good coarse salt to season. Always welcome is a thick slice of bread to mop up the leftover olive oil and nudge the last stray bits of fennel onto your fork. A very nice companion to fennel salad, for an easy lunch is a freshly cooked bowl of warm chickpeas, also drizzled with olive oil and salt. Very simple and very delicious.
One more note, don’t throw away the orange peels, zest the orange first and freeze to use later (I have a dedicated jar in my freezer for this), or freeze the peels to candy later (they are so excellent in baking, or dipped in chocolate, or just eaten as is for a little something sweet).