fennel & radish salad with lemon & olive oil

· · · ·
fennel and radish salad with lemon and olive oil

I’m posting this recipe again because seriously I can’t get enough of it. It has now become a weekly thing in my house. It’s hard to believe that a couple of years ago I didn’t like fennel and found the liquorice aniseed flavour intolerable. Now I crunch my way through bulb after bulb adding a variety of things on the side. I love to stuff this salad into toasted whole wheat pitas with left over grilled salmon or roast chicken. I pile it onto open sandwiches with seed bread and hummus. It pretty much goes with most things. Its delicious with raw or cooked fish and grilled chicken. The other day I turned it into a stunning slaw by adding shredded cabbage and a dollop of my easy home-made mayonnaise.

Super healthy fresh, citrussy and packed with flavour and crunch #winning.

It’s a Jamie Oliver recipe and there are a few things you need to do to ensure its a success:

Slice the vegetables as thinly as you can. If you want to take ALL the effort out the prep and to make it in under 5 minutes, use a food processor with a very fine slice setting. I set my Breville Whizz Pro. Alternatively, use a mandolin.

To make the vegetables extra crunchy, soak them in a bowl of ice-cold water with ice cubes added. This transforms them into the crispest texture that will have you crunching your way through this salad with much glee. Do all of this immediately before you want to serve this salad.

I also whip out the finest extra virgin olive oil I have available. Because it is such an important component of this salad you really want to use the best.

You are basically working on a ratio of 2:1 fennel to radish and then add the dressing ingredients to your taste. You may want it more lemony or you may like more salt. I only use Maldon salt. It is by far my favourite salt ever.

I now also use a little of the fennel stalk above the bulb. The light green part. When sliced finely its delicious. I also like to finely chop up a small handful of the leaves to decorate and flavour my salad.

Recipe – serves 4 (adapted from Jamie Oliver)

  • 1 fennel bulb (white and light green parts only)
  • 150g radishes
  • 2 T lemon juice (1 lemon more or less)
  • 5 T olive oil
  • 1 teaspoon Maldon salt
  • lots of freshly ground black pepper

SaveSave

SaveSave

13 Comments

  1. Fiona Williamson says:

    Couldn’t agree more – my favourite is sliced fennel, orange & almond salad. A good winter salad!

  2. Signe Rousseau says:

    Looks lovely – huge fan of fennel too! I made a fennel tarte tatin the other day (So Good!), and couldn’t figure out what to do with all the stalks and fronds, so I stashed them in the freezer. A week later I took them out and infused some milk with them for a couple of days, and then used that for fennel ice cream. I’ve tried this before with fennel seeds, but the flavour of fresh fennel is just so much brighter. Wonderful stuff.

  3. I think fennel is like Scotch in that both can be ‘an acquired taste’… !! ; o ) This salad looks delicious – light, crunchy and flavorful !!

  4. Hi Signe, how stunning. I love the idea of fennel ice cream. Makes so much sense to me. Also the tartin.

  5. I must try that Fiona – sounds amazing.

  6. Well Cecile then I have acquired the taste for both. Thankfully.

  7. Nothing makes me happier than a simple dressing of lemon and olive oil…it’s perfect. Watermelon radishes would be so pretty with this!! xx

  8. Kristin Hale says:

    I made this yesterday. Delicious and so simple– thank you for the recipe.
    Signe– I’d love to try your ice-cream!

  9. Awesome Kristin, so glad you enjoyed it

  10. This was a perfect seasonal salad for March! In order to stretch it for a few more servings, I actually served this over plain pasta as well and it was delicious both as a stand alone salad and a pasta dish.

  11. Hi Carolyn, wow – Im glad it worked with pasta – a nice crunch.

  12. Is there dill in the salad, too?

  13. Hi Kim, not dill but fennel leaves (so similar)

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *