At this time of the year, too much work and a gloomy weather often makes us feel low in energy. So we often go for colourful food, to balance the grey skies. This week we are making a nutritious salad, with raw fennel and citrus.
First of all, we love crunching on raw vegetables. It is relaxing, I can’t explain it. Do you remember our raw beetroot and apple salad? Or the wonderful galomyzithra and yoghurt dip we made a few weeks ago to accompany raw veggies? And then there’s citrus, the fruits that give colour to winter. And vitamins! Last year we made a wonderful citrus dressing, and a carrot and citrus salad to go with it. This week we found some blood oranges at the market. They are highly seasonal, and we absolutely love foods that you can only find for a few weeks in the year –wild garlic, we are waiting for you!
For this salad, we also used a selection of olives, wild green unripe olives with lemon and our kalamata olives with ouzo, to perfectly complement citrus and fennel! They are a good source of protein, vitamin E, antioxidants and polyphenols and an excellent provider of oleic acid and oleuropein. And yummy!
And as this is a citrus feast, we couldn’t but use our 17C olive oil with lemons and oranges and our mandarin balsamic vinegar. So go on, grab your fruit and veg and join us in making our days more colourful and fresh!
Serves 4
1 bulb of fennel
1 small orange
1 small blood orange
1 small pink grapefruit
½ tub of olives (we used a combination of unripe lemon, kalamata with ouzo and kalamata orange olives)
1 tbsp balsamic cream with mandarin
1 tbsp lemon juice
4 tbsp 17C flavoured olive oil
salt
Thinly slice the fennel. Peel and finely slice the orange, blood orange and grapefruit.
Place in a large platter and scatter the olives. Drizzle with balsamic mandarin cream, lemon olive oil and lemon juice. Season with salt and serve immediately.
This salad turns into a whole different dish if you keep it overnight. The fruits and veg soften up and the flavours all blend wonderfully together. So you can have it for lunch the next day!
