The Weeknight Kitchen · No-Cook Starter · Serves 4

Shaved Fennel
& Orange Salad

Name: Shaved Fennel & Orange Salad
Total time: 15 min
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: Italian
Ingredients: 400 g fennel bulbs; 400 g navel oranges; 30 ml extra-virgin olive oil; 10 ml fresh lemon juice; 40 g Castelvetrano olives; 3 g flaky sea salt; 1 g black pepper; 5 g fennel fronds

Paper-thin fennel, sweet orange, good olive oil and flaky salt — a Sicilian starter with four ingredients and nothing to cook.

~15 min total 15 min prep No cook method

Spoon cost

Time ●○○○○ Anytime

VeganGluten-Free

Servingsamounts scale to match

Units

Ingredients

Shave the fennel as thin as you possibly can, and dress it at the table. Thick fennel is a raw vegetable; paper-thin fennel is a salad — a mandoline is the difference between the two, and a very sharp knife is a distant second. Dress it no more than a few minutes before it goes out, or the salt draws the water out and the crispness is gone.

Before you start

Get these into the state the recipe asks for first — the steps that use them won't wait.

Fronds picked off the fennel and set aside — they are the garnish, and they wilt if they sit in the dressing
Oranges peeled down to the flesh, over a bowl — the juice that runs out is half the dressing

Method

Cook's notes

The core is the tough part. A fennel bulb has a dense wedge at the base like a cabbage; cut it out and the rest shaves beautifully. Do not throw the stalks away — they are good in stock.

Ice water is optional but nice. Ten minutes in ice water makes the shavings curl and crisp, which is a texture worth having when the salad is this plain. Dry them properly afterward or the dressing slides off.

Save the juice. Everything that runs out while you cut the oranges is the dressing. Cutting them over the bowl is not fussiness — it is where the sweetness comes from.

What it goes with: it sits well before anything rich. The anise and citrus cut straight through butter, which makes it a good opener for brown-butter scallops.

It does not keep. Shaved fennel dressed and refrigerated overnight is limp and grey. Shave ahead and hold the fennel in ice water if you need to, but dress at the last minute.

Easier, if you like

Skip supreming the oranges — peel them, slice them into rounds, and lay the rounds on the platter. It looks better than segments anyway, and there is no membrane work.
Pre-sliced fennel shows up in some produce departments in clamshells. It is thicker than you want but it removes the mandoline entirely.

Vegan and gluten-free as written

Vegan: already vegan.

Gluten-free: naturally gluten-free.

No fennel? Thinly shaved celery heart plus a pinch of crushed fennel seed gets you surprisingly close.

Add-ins that work: thin red onion soaked in cold water, toasted pistachios, shaved ricotta salata (not vegan), or a few leaves of mint.