Here’s a simple but sophisticated feeling salad with red endive, citrus and fennel. It’s a looker and the ingredients can easily be adapted to what’s available to you. If you can’t find red endive, use white endive and mix in some radicchio or Treviso leaves for color. I usually use one head of endive per person, but use your judgment…sometimes they can have a lot of leaves or be fairly small.
Other good substitutes would be toasted walnuts or pecans for the pistachios, and shaved Parmesan or ricotta salads for the cheese. You can see in the second salad below that I used ricotta salata, and only pink grapefruit instead of oranges. I also added other greens like frisée and baby gem.
Ingredients:
4 heads red endive
1/2-1 bulb fennel
1-2 oranges, tangerines, etc.
1 pink grapefruit
1/3 cup chopped toasted pistachios
Pecorino
Vinaigrette: 1 Tbs white wine vinegar, 1 Tbs Dijon, 3 Tbs olive oil, s+p to taste
Trim ends off endive and separate leaves. Trim bottom and shoots off fennel and slice remaining bulb thinly. Reserve some fronds for garnish. Cut peel of citrus and slice into wedges or circles.
Toss endive and fennel with enough vinaigrette to coat. Grate a liberal amount of pecorino on top and lightly toss again. Arrange on serving plate with citrus tucked in and around.
Top with pistachios, some fennel fronds and more cheese if desired.
If you have left over vinaigrette you can drizzle it over, or use a tiny bit more olive oil.
Serves about 4.
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