Orange and Grilled Fennel Salad

Good idea: Eating salads every day. 

Bad idea: The salad only being lettuce.

Here in France I'm impressed that they get their greens every day but a bit disappointed 'salad' refers to just lettuce, or in the cold months, yummier nutty, buttery 'mache'*

To me, salad implies a mixture of things. A chopped apple isn't a fruit salad by itself, is it? I guess in New Zealand we're used to eating lots of different salads, often as side dish, sometimes as a meal on their own. The French have a salad (lettuce) course, which I commend but intend to enhance!

So here's my first offering, that yummy mache (or your substitute like baby spinach, beet greens etc) paired with salad-in-its-own-right combo of fennel and orange. I like the last two ingredients fresh as a salad/desert in summer but as its winter (and I have a little extra time on my hands) I've been grilling the fennel (you could do this on the BBQ in summer). It's incredible how the flavour changes - it mellows and becomes ever more sweet, much like garlic does when you roast it. Of course, it has its own flavour which I love and, best of all, grilling them takes almost no oil and is quick.

*According to veggiegardeningtips.com, "Mache, also known as corn salad, rapunzel, field salad, or lamb’s lettuce is a little known salad green with a mild lettuce like flavor." It's common in this part of France where it grows well along the sandy banks of the Loire and handles the cold admirably. It's supposed to be a great source of vitamen C and iron. And who could go past a name like Rapunzel? This is the veggie Rapunzel's mother was craving when she was preggers!

Orange and Grilled Fennel Salad

Ingredients:

1 large orange
1/2 bulb of fennel
2 handfuls of mache  or baby spinach / other salad greens
3 sprigs of fresh mint
2 t balsamic vinegar
2 T extra virgin olive oil
pinch sea salt
black pepper to taste

Method:

1. Wash mache / greens (in sink or bowl of cold water to remove sandy grit). Remove to colander or salad spinner to drain. Rinse and slice mint and add to the mache/greens. 
2. Remove tough outer leaves of fennel bulb and discard. Chop fennel into slices. Grill on a very lightly oiled grill (or put on a tray and use oven grill with door ajar). They don't need to be heaps grilled, just to get a little colour / a couple of grill lines.
3. While fennel is grilling, peel orange (slice off peel to avoid bitter pith), and chop into disks and then segments and put in a salad bowl. Squeeze in any extra juice from peel.
4. Add to the salad bowl the vinegar, olive oil, salt and a good few grinds of pepper. Mix.
5. Add the fennel and when ready to serve, the mache/greens. Mix leaves through the orange vinaigrette very gently. Mache and similar salad greens bruise easily and go soggy and look terrible if you leave them sitting in dressing for long.

I served this with a leek tart with homemade wholemeal pastry, very nice!