This is it! This is the year when I do what everyone else has already done: I’m making beet and fennel salad!
To cook the beets or not? I can think of many fine arguments either way, and maybe next time I make this salad I will just peel the beets and shred them, then cut the fennel a little finer. I elected to roast them this time because then it will be easier to peel them. There is still plenty of crunch in the fennel—a nice contrast to the sweet, tender beets.
I don’t want to put anything very distracting on the vegetables for dressing, but I think orange would complement the fennel and not get in a fight with the beets. Coriander is friends with both of the main ingredients; so it can be in the dressing, too.
Beet and Fennel Salad
Equal volumes beet and fennel
Olive oil to coat each beet
Juice of one orange (about ⅓ cup)
Twice as much olive oil (about ⅔ cup)
½ t salt ½ t fresh ground coriander
¼ t fresh ground black pepper
Trim the tops and tails off the beets, scrub them, and coat them with olive oil. Wrap them in foil and roast them in a 400° oven for about an hour or until tender. Cool them, peel them, and cut them into quartered slices.
Trim the fronds off the fennel (saving some leaves for garnish), halve and core each bulb. Cut it crosswise into half-moon-shaped slices.
Shake the orange juice, olive oil, and seasonings in a jar until well blended. Taste and correct seasonings until they make you happy.
Toss the fennel in some of the dressing. In a separate dish, toss the beets in some more of the dressing. Get a third dish and pour beets into half of it, then fennel into the other half. Strew some fennel leaves artfully across the dish so that the place at the edge, where the fennel meets the beets and starts turning pink, will be concealed.
Mangiamo!
