Fennel Salad Reimagined

Few vegetables are as transformed by cooking as fennel.  Raw, fennel has a faintly licorice-like taste.  I love it, but not everyone does.  Whether you find the raw version intriguing or not, cooked fennel is much milder - interesting to be sure, but not remotely bizarre.  

As the weather (finally) got warm this week, I got a hankering for Alice Waters’ shaved fennel salad.  But in a moment of mad scientist kitchen-edition whimsy, I wondered what the dish would be if those same ingredients were cooked and made into a composed (arranged) salad.  The answer is that the new version is as delicious as its progenitor, in a completely different way.  Where the layered salad is crunchy and light, this one is smooth and the flavors are concentrated.  Both are worthy of a place at your table.

Composed Fennel Salad With Mushrooms and Parmesan

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Salad Ideas and Tips

Salad is almost always on the menu at my house.  Whether it’s a side dish or the centerpiece of the meal, salad always works.  When I need inspiration, I inventory what's on hand, close my eyes, and imagine how a couple of the ingredients I've found might fit together in a salad.

Here is a chronicle of some of my salad-making adventures and what I’ve learned from several decades of salad trial-and-error.  I’ll consider this post successful if you come away with just one idea for an ingredient you’ve never used in salad before, one new idea for a salad combination, or one tip for how to make a better salad.  Enjoy getting inspired and the results!

Salad Ingredients 

The “base”

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Watermelon - It May No Longer Be Summer But...

It’s October and the leaves should be turning, with cool breezes reminding us to get sweaters out from storage.  Instead it’s 80 degrees and muggy here.  Some are anxious for fall, but I’m enjoying this reminder of summer.  I had already planned to do a watermelon post this week, so the weather is a nice coincidence.

We ate more watermelon than usual when a high school student from the Mississippi Delta stayed with us this summer.  In an effort to make her feel at home, I asked what foods she liked.  Shyly, she responded that watermelon is one of her favorite desserts - when I brought one home, she smiled broadly.  As we munched on slices, she talked about planting seeds leftover from watermelons her family ate and tending the vines as the melons grew.  

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