Salad (R)

Oh, hell. I forgot how to do font colors, though I've mastered italics and bold . Suze, would you add a red R to the title? Thanks!

Well, I've just had a student cancel a visit in St. Paul, just as I was getting ready to leave. Suddenly the day looms ahead of me. The dishes are done (between 6:30 and 8:30 a.m., yes, it took two hours), the house is clean. I've put in a load of laundry, mostly dishtowels and napkins. Charlie's gone to Hudson for lumber and won't be back for an hour or two. What to do? Think I'll read out on the deck. It's a beautiful day, and as soon as Charlie gets home and discovers me here, I'm sure we'll work in the garden.

Dinner went well yesterday. Great hors d'œuvres (thanks, Mom), the salad was fine, and the lamb came out just right. Charlie did a fine job with the green beans, but I way overcooked the canellinis. Too bad; they were good anyway, but texture is important (to me) in beans. Ruth brought a little egg-shaped cake. The weather turned fair just as everyone arrived (everyone being Ruth, Dave, Mom, and a couple that the Woods always have for holiday dinners, so we know them), so we were able to have cocktails and h d's on the deck. Anyway, it was a nice time. Dave had to take a few naps, but ate the most he's eaten since he became sick.




The two closest to the camera are Dave and Ruth.








Enjoyed the conference narration and hope it will continue. What hotel?

O.K., here's the recipe, verbatim. My comments will follow, though let me add first that I did not use blood oranges either time I made this.

Blood Orange & Fennel Salad

This light and refreshing salad makes a wonderful starter before a robust meal. Regular oranges work well, but don't look quite as dramatic. To turn this into a more substantial course, add 1 pound cooked shrimp and toss them with some of the dressing about 10 minutes before assembling the salad.

INGREDIENTS:

Citronette dressing

1/2 cup mild olive oil
Grated zest of one orange, about 1 tablespoon
1/4 cup blood orange juice
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice or more to taste
1/2 teaspoon salt
A few grindings of black pepper
1/2 teaspoon sugar if needed for balance

Salad:

4 blood oranges or 3 navel oranges
2 small bulbs fennel
3 bunches watercress, stems removed, or 4 large handfuls of small arugula or 4 heads Belgian endive, leaves separated
1/2 cup torn mint leaves

INSTRUCTIONS: For the dressing: In a bowl, whisk together the olive oil, zest, juices, salt and pepper. Dip a leaf into it and taste to see if it is tart enough. Adjust seasonings. If the dressing is too tart, add sugar. Set aside.

For the salad: Working with 1 orange at a time, cut a thin slice off the top and bottom to reveal the flesh. Stand the orange upright and remove the peel in wide strips, cutting downward and following the contour of the fruit. If the oranges are small, cut them crosswise into 1/4-inch rounds. For larger oranges, hold the peeled orange over a bowl, cut along both sides of each segment, releasing the segments from the membrane and allowing them to drop into the bowl. Using the knife tip, pry out any seeds from the segments. Squeeze the membrane over the bowl to extract extra juice, which you can add to the dressing at serving time. Set the oranges and juice aside.
Trim the fennel bulbs, removing any tough outer leaves. Cut in half and cut out the tough center core. Slice very thin. Toss fennel slices in a bowl with a few tablespoons of dressing about 15 minutes before serving the salad. Set aside.
In a bowl, combine the salad greens and mint leaves. Stir any extra juice collected from the orange membrane into the vinaigrette. Toss the greens with enough dressing to moisten the leaves, reserving a few tablespoons for the final drizzle.
Distribute the greens among four salad plates. Top with the marinated fennel and the orange slices or segments. Drizzle with remaining dressing. Sprinkle with a little chopped mint if desired.
Serves 4.
PER SERVING: 345 calories, 5 g protein, 25 g carbohydrate, 27 g fat (4 g saturated), 0 cholesterol, 364 mg sodium, 8 g fiber.


The only potentially difficult part of this recipe is sectioning the oranges; I've been doing it for years, and with practice it's not too bad. I'd do that rather than slicing them, but it probably doesn't really matter. Julia probably remembers the big bowls of orange and grapefruit sections I used to make in RF when we got regular shipments of citrus.

I hoped both times I made this to find blood oranges, but the season has just ended. For yesterday's salad I had grabbed some oranges at Kowalski's a few days before and did not realize until I started cutting them up that there was something weird about them. Their flesh was dark pink, rather like a red grapefruit. I looked at the little label on an orange and it said Cara Cara. I looked that up on the 'net, and read about them. Interesting. Anyway, they were delicious, and the color was perfect for the salad. I had one normal orange in the mix, and that was a nice contrast. If I do this again for a special occasion I'll use half Cara Caras and half regular oranges (or blood oranges, if I can find them!).

I used half arugula and half "spring mix" as the greens. I didn't have any fresh mint the first time I made it; I put some dried mint into the dressing. Yesterday I lost my nerve and did not put mint leaves in with the salad, though I'd bought some mint. I just made a little chiffonade at the end and sprinkled some on each plate. I wish I'd been more aggressive with the mint.

Anyway, it's a good salad.

Time to hang up the laundry!