Winter turns to spring salad: fennel, orange, and . . .

This week at the market strawberries were less plentiful because of all the rain, but there were still plenty of winter roots, asparagus, leeks and greens.  There are also the wonderful tiny baby potatoes that, roasted in a hot oven with nothing but a little butter or olive oil and salt and pepper, are one of the best things in the world.  We also bought some pea shoots, an ingredient still relatively unfamiliar to us, but a sure and obvious sign of spring.

This week we made another salad for which all the ingredients are available at the market except salt and pepper.  We had seen recipes for fennel and orange salads in cookbooks, especially Italian ones, but the combination didn't really capture our imaginations, or get us chopping, until we saw fennel bulbs and oranges cohabiting at the Davis Farmers Market in the winter months.  Following our guiding  principle of composing market salads--assembling ingredients with different colors and textures to achieve a balance of sweet and bitter, crunchy and tender--we've gotten in to the habit of adding a bitter green (such as the beautiful burgundy treviso radicchio at last week's market), a hint of sweetness (from chopped dates), and the crunch of pistachios.  Here are the ingredients, a salad maker's inspiring still life.

The result is both beautiful and delicious, and can be a main dish or a side.  But first there is a little work to be done.  Cut out the cores of the fennel bulbs and slice the bulbs as thinly as possible.  If you have a mandoline, this would be a good time to use it.  We tend to rely upon our chef's knives. Be sure to throw in some of the fennel fronds chopped.  This turns up the green and the fennel flavors.

For this salad, we like glistening, juicy orange segments.  These are easy to achieve by cutting off the peel of the orange and then inserting a paring knife between the segments to free each one, leaving the membranes behind.When you are done, squeeze the remaining husk of the orange.  The juice will provide the acid that dresses the salad.  No vinegar necessary.

It's true that one loses a little bit of orange flesh with this method.  That's a reminder of what a luxury it is to have so much luscious fruit available.  In all those Victorian books about receiving one precious orange at the bottom of one's Christmas stocking--a burst of sunshine in the dead of winter and a triumph of shipping--such an extravagant salad would be unimaginable.  But we're not living in the little house on the prairie so get that knife out. 

We roll the treviso radicchio leaves to julienne them.  Then we chop the dates.  They are so sweet that you want just little bursts of their flavor here and there.  Too many and the salad will be cloying.  Before moving to Davis, the dates we'd used in baking were diced and came in a box.  They were hard as rocks and flavorless, resembling most closely the hard lumps in old brown sugar rather than a fruit.  These soft, chewy, carmelized dates seem worlds away from their debased relations.  They are a treat in themselves but they are also, as in this salad, a revelatory addition to dishes savory or sweet.  Finally, sprinkle the salad with toasted pistachios, and toss it with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  It will look like this.

 

The fennel and oranges can be prepped in advance.  The orange juice will keep the fennel from browning.  But the oranges will also shed juice, which can make the salad wet.  So you might want to drain it before proceeding.  Add the radicchio, nuts, and dates, and dress the salad, at the last minute.  You want to maximize the contrasting textures.