Beet and Fennel Salad

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!

Soup Series 2: Rescue Orange!

Bend your ear down to this soup: it’s so orange, you can hear a tiny siren sound.

I found some neglected carrots and abandoned squash in the crisper drawer. They had some soft spots. And a few wrinkly peels. There may have been some sprouting. All right, I admit it: parts of them were brown.

My poor vegetables weren’t going to win any beauty contests; that was for sure. But they were mostly intact and I hated to throw them out. Besides, it was I who had failed them. They deserved more from me. I owed it to them. “You will look just fine as soup,” I told them.

Cooked this way, they look (and taste) exciting and delicious again! A splash of orange juice and a sprig of tarragon rescues them from the trash can.

Carrot and Squash Soup with Orange and Tarragon
Serves 6

2 T butter or olive oil
1 c chopped onion
6 c diced carrots and/or winter squash, such as butternut and kabocha
1 qt broth
½ c orange juice
2 T chopped fresh tarragon
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat the butter or oil in a stockpot. Sauté the onion until soft, about 4 or 5 minutes. Dump in the carrots/squash and sauté that for another 5 or 6 minutes, until things begin to soften up and start hinting at getting brown.

Add the broth and simmer until the vegetables are tender, maybe 15 minutes.

Purée the soup in a blender or food processor. For good measure (and if you need to impress someone), force the soup through a sieve; this will make it super-smooth.

Return the soup to the pot, add the remaining ingredients, and bring it up to piping hot. Serve to acclaim.

Kale: Take That!

You see what I did there?

I stripped the Russian kale off the stems; macerated it in olive oil, salt, and lemon juice for half an hour (props to AffairsofLiving.com); then tossed it with a sectioned navel orange and a pinch of toasted anise seeds.

Mmm-hmm. You're welcome.