salad

Posted by trish on Oct 13, 2011 in Eat | 0 comments

I had several of my school friends over for the weekend for a combined 40th birthday celebration (sooo much blog fodder) and Nina made this salad for dinner on Saturday night.  It’s from ‘Jamie’s Italy’ by Jamie Oliver, and it’s called Insalata Amalfitana – Amalfi salad.

This summer I am going to try very hard not to serve up the usual combination of lettuce, tomato, cucumber and capsicum.  I am going to try instead to find the most unusual combination of ingredients and see how that goes over with the family.  This salad was generally well received by the kids, and enthusiastically gobbled up by the grown-ups.You need lovely sweet oranges for this one.

JAMIE OLIVER’S INSALATA AMALFITANA

1 bulb fennel, washed

1 red onion, peeled

1 cucumber

a large handful of radishes, with tops, washed.

optional: a small handful of ice cubes

1 tablespoon good-quality herb or red-wine vinegar

good-quality extra-virgin olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

4 oranges, peeled, segmented and pips removed

Remove the herby tops from the fennel and put them to one side, then trim the fennel at both ends and, if need be, lose the outside layer – it’s sometimes a bit dry.  Split the fennel in half and slice lengthways as finely as possible.  Put into a large bowl.  Remove both ends of the onion, then half it and slice it as finely as possible.  Slice the cucumber finely.  When it comes to the radishes, leave about 1cm of stalk on them.  Then slice a little off each radish, roll it on to the flat edge and finely slice.

If you want to throw a few ice cubes in the bowl and toss them together with everything, bizarrely enough this does cause the veg to go even crunchier.  Just keep them in there for a few minutes.  The cowboy way of doing this is to add the veg to iced water, but if you’ve ever done that then yes, the veg goes crunchy, but most of the flavour drains into the water.

Remove the ice cubes from the sliced vegetables. In a bowl mix together 2 tablespoons of good herb or red wine vinegar and 6 or so tablespoons of a good quality extra virgin olive oil.  Mix well, then taste.  You might want to add a little extra vinegar, depending on how sweet your oranges are.  Taste and season with salt and pepper.  Dress the salad with this and then add the orange segments and any juice.  Toss a few times, then divide between your plates and sprinkle wit hthe saved fennel tops.  Serve straight away.