One of the most valuable lessons (so far) I learned in cooking class at 18 Reasons (or The Big Kitchen as like to call it), is the layered salad. This taste-bud tantalizing method of salad building can turn a mountain of veg into an empty plate and a full belly in no time. I never tire of these.
The beauty of this method is that the variety of textures and flavors make each bite taste different- your palate is continuously engaged, as opposed to tossing everything together with your dressing resulting in a salad that can get boring before it's been finished. This is insanely good. By the time I finished building this it was mountainous. I was reading a book while eating and it seemed quite suddenly my plate was empty.
This Shaved Fennel Salad was a riff on the Buttermilk Farro Salad (link below) I made last week from 101 Cookbooks. I had some of those same veggies left and lots of the buttermilk dressing to use up (which I mixed with a little home made mayo). Build the salad on a large plate or a platter, using 1/2 of each ingredient then repeating the layers. This particular salad went down like this:
arugula
shaved fennel
shaved black Spanish radish
shaved French breakfast radishes
shaved zucchini coins
sliced toasted almonds
chopped dried cranberries
crumbled goat cheese
Depending on whether the salad is dinner for one or one course of a larger gathering you can scale the number of ingredients up or down.
-Some kind of green: arugula, baby spinach, kale, little gems, spring mix
-2 or 3 (at the most) shaved, thinly sliced or grated vegetables
-toasted nuts
-fruit for sweetness-golden raisins or other dried fruit or mangoes or apples or mandarins
-cheese-goat, feta, shaved parmesan or blue cheese...I like salty cheeses
-salt
-pepper
-dressing drizzled lightly-lemon juice & olive oil work just fine.
Remember to build the salad in two layers.
Remember to build the salad in two layers.
I've also added avocado or sliced hard boiled eggs to make this a meal.
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