Fennel is actually good

Coincidentally, this week the New York Times had an article about easy entertaining that included variations on a blended squash soup! The starters also included fennel salads, which reminded me of a dinner I made a while back that I thought I’d share with you. Even though the NYT is obsessed with fennel salads (their archive is filled with permutations of that and blended squash soups, sorbets, grain salads, and other darling viands of the upper class), that doesn’t mean that this vegetable is limited to snobs. There’s nothing special about a fennel bulb; in fact, it has a very mild flavor. The first time I saw a fennel plant, I thought you were supposed to eat the fluffy top leafy part, which is much more “anisey”-tasting and it felt like I had just brushed my teeth with Tom’s of Maine toothpaste.

Anyway, we were making dinner for vegetarian friends, so we came up with a fennel salad as a starter, eggplant parmesan as the main, a zinfandel wine, and a ginger-maple-blueberry parfait as the dessert. I served the parfait in tall glasses with tall, skinny spoons; and topped them with a blop of whipped cream, a sprinkle of chopped crystallized ginger, a mint leaf, and a whole ginger cookie (small wafer-like cookies I found in Irma; I think they might have been Scottish).

Unfortunately, I can’t find the original recipes that I combined to make the fennel salad, but basically I made a vinaigrette out of lemon juice, zest, toasted and ground fennel seeds, salt, pepper, and olive oil. Then I tossed that into a mixture of crispy greens like frisée, thinly-sliced fennel, and romaine. Top with toasted pine nuts. It’s pretty basic/classic. There may or may not have been something sweet in there but probably not, since the dessert was so sweet. This salad is fresh, crisp, and simple, and goes well with a heavy, gloppy main like the eggplant parmesan.