Shaved fennel and orange salad done properly

Fennel bulbs were $2.90 a kilo at the fruit shop on Beaumont Street last Tuesday, and half the ones in the crate still had enough stalk on them to sweep a shed floor. I bought four anyway. Good fennel, properly trimmed and sliced thin enough to read a newspaper through, is one of the best things you can put on a lunch plate in fifteen minutes flat, and most people never get past boiling it into submission or leaving it raw and woody. That’s the whole problem with fennel in this country. Nobody shows it any respect.

This salad is the fix. Shaved fennel, orange, red onion, olives, a scatter of toasted almonds and a dressing that’s really just orange juice, oil and vinegar doing their job properly. It’s the kind of thing I’d put on the pass for a lunch service without blinking, and it takes about as long to make as it does to boil the kettle.

Why shaved fennel and orange actually work together

Fennel raw has a clean aniseed bite that mellows the second you slice it thin and let it sit. Orange brings sweetness and acid in the one hit, which means you don’t need much else to dress it. Red onion adds a bit of sharpness, olives bring salt, almonds bring crunch. It’s a proper balance of textures and flavours rather than a bowl of leaves with stuff thrown on top, which is what half the salads sold as “fresh” actually are.

There’s decent nutrition sense behind it too. Vegetables and fruit together in the one dish, minimal added sugar, good fats from the oil and almonds. The Eat for Health guidelines keep banging on about getting more variety of vegetables into your week, and a salad like this is an easy way to tick that box at lunch without feeling like you’re eating a science experiment. If you want more of that thinking, we’ve written before about foods that support your body’s natural cleansing, and fennel gets a fair mention there.

Buying and prepping fennel without wasting half of it

Buy bulbs that are firm and pale, not the ones going brown and soft at the base — that’s fennel on its way out, and no amount of dressing fixes that. Trim the stalks off but keep the fronds, the wispy green bits, because they’re basically free herbs and most people bin them without a second thought. That’s a waste, and it annoys me more than it probably should.

Cut the bulb in half through the root, take out the tough core if it’s a big bulb, then slice it as thin as you can manage. A mandoline does this properly. A knife does it fine if your knife skills are up to it and you’re not in a rush. Don’t muck about trying to get paper-thin slices with a blunt knife — you’ll lose a fingertip before you lose enough thickness. Sharpen the knife first. Always sharpen the knife first.

Once it’s sliced, drop it into a bowl of iced water for ten minutes. This crisps it right up and takes the edge off any bitterness. Skip this step if you’re in a genuine hurry, but honestly it’s the difference between a salad that’s good and one that’s properly good.

Ingredients

• 2 medium fennel bulbs, fronds reserved
• 2 large navel oranges (Riverina fruit if you can get it, worth the extra dollar)
• 1 small red onion, very finely sliced
• 60g pitted kalamata olives, roughly chopped
• 40g flaked almonds, toasted
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp orange juice (from the trimmings, don’t waste it)
• 1 tsp white wine vinegar
• Sea salt and cracked black pepper
• Optional: shaved parmesan or a few pieces of soft goat’s cheese

Method

1. Trim the fennel bulbs, remove the tough outer layer if needed, and slice as thin as possible using a mandoline or a very sharp knife. Reserve the feathery fronds.
2. Soak the sliced fennel in a bowl of iced water for 10 minutes, then drain well and pat dry with a clean tea towel.
3. Cut the top and bottom off each orange, then slice down the sides to remove the peel and pith. Slice the oranges into thin rounds, catching any juice that runs off in a small bowl for the dressing.
4. In a small jug, whisk together the olive oil, reserved orange juice, white wine vinegar, a good pinch of salt and a few turns of black pepper. Taste as you go — some oranges are sweeter than others and the dressing needs adjusting accordingly.
5. Toast the flaked almonds in a dry pan over medium heat for 2-3 minutes, tossing constantly, until golden. Watch them closely; they burn the second you look away.
6. Arrange the fennel and orange slices on a platter, scatter over the red onion, olives and toasted almonds.
7. Drizzle with the dressing, scatter the reserved fennel fronds over the top, and finish with parmesan or goat’s cheese if using. Serve immediately.

Serves

Serves 4 as a lunch or side, 2 as a light main.

A serving idea that earns its place

On its own this is a proper lunch, especially with a hunk of good bread to mop up the dressing. But it also sits brilliantly alongside something off the grill — a piece of poached or seared fish is the classic pairing, and if you want to go the whole way, our poached salmon with fennel, orange and chilli recipe uses a similar flavour base and the two play well together if you’re feeding a table. For a heartier lunch, serve it next to chargrilled chicken with salsa verde. Either way, get your pan properly hot before anything hits it — a lukewarm pan is how you end up steaming your protein instead of searing it, and that’s a different dish altogether.

A variation worth trying

Swap the almonds for toasted pistachios and add a handful of rocket if you want more green through it. Blood oranges when they’re in season through winter make this look spectacular, though the flavour difference is honestly minor — mostly it’s just a better photo. If you’re avoiding dairy, skip the cheese entirely; it’s not doing heavy lifting in this dish, just adding a bit of richness on top.

I’ll admit I used to think this salad needed more going on — a mustard vinegara, maybe some fennel seed toasted and crushed through the dressing. Tried it a few times. Overcomplicated it. The truth is fennel and orange don’t need much help, and the dish is better restrained. That’s a lesson that took me longer to learn than it should have.

Getting more vegetables into an ordinary week

This one fits nicely into the kind of week where lunch needs to be quick but you still want something with real nutrition in it, not just a sandwich eaten over the sink. We’ve written before about healthy eating when life gets busy, and dishes like this are exactly the sort of thing that make that easier — minimal cooking, good keeping qualities if you make the fennel and dressing ahead, and enough crunch and acid that it doesn’t feel like a diet plate. If you’re after more slow, considered vegetable dishes for the weekend, our roasted vegetable salad with baked fig and goats cheese is worth a Sunday afternoon. The Better Health Channel has decent guidance too if you want the broader nutrition case for eating this way regularly rather than as a one-off.

Anyway. Get the fennel sliced thin, don’t skip the iced water, and taste your dressing before it goes anywhere near the plate. Do those three things and the rest of it looks after itself.

— Dave Forsythe, Golden Door Living kitchen