Carrots and Fennel

I bought a fennel bulb to try out a recipe called Mediterranean Bean Ragout with fennel, potatoes, cannellini beans and tomatoes but when it came time to make the dish, it seemed like we'd been having a lot of tomato-bean based dishes and it didn't sound that good anymore. So what to do with a fennel bulb that had to be used…I looked in the Colorado Collage cookbook, a gift from the Holmbergs [thanks you Holmbergs] and found Halibut with Carrot and Fennel Salad. Perfect!

We decided against doing to the halibut but the recipe did sound good - run, molasses, orange juice, ginger, garlic, jalapeno - nice assortment of flavors.

So the salad called for julienned carrots and fennel. How fortuitous that I had recently purchased a tool to help with that! It looks like a potato peeler but has a serrated blade. It doesn't work so well on those little mini carrots but works great on larger carrots. The strands come out very long. You can chop them. or we found that when you put them in a stirfry they will break apart. The chopped tomatoes were for the turkey cheesesteaks we were having with the salad.



Carrot Fennel Salad
2 c julienned or shredded carrots
2 c julienned or shredded fennel
1/2 c rice vinegar (I left this out)
1/4 c olive oil (I left this out) ** it seemed like the vinaigrette would be enough liquid

Orange Vinaigrette
1/2 c frozen orange juice concentrate
1/2 c olive oil (only used about 1/4 c)
1/2 t sesame oil
2 t dijon mustard (doubled this)
2 t rice wine vinegar (doubled this)
salt and pepper (no salt but yes on the pepper)

Oh - I just read the recipe again and you were supposed to drain the salad and then drizzle 1 T of the vinaigrette over the top. That's why the extra olive oil and rice vinegar - duh! The vinaigrette was sweet– Tim said it tasted like orange sherbet. The fennel wasn't as strong as I had expected, it actually tasted more like celery. Nice time we make this I'll serve it on a bed of shredded lettuce (and follow the recipe!)