Nettle and Quince

Winter bares its teeth, there’s suddenly more of a bite, the chill creeps to the bone and settles. Sometimes this calls for soup. Sometimes, citrus.

I go on — we all go on — about locality and seasonality, and it’s true that you’ll never find a fresh strawberry in our house in October (the children have had to learn the hard way). But, as anyone who studies French will also learn (the hard way), no rule exists without exceptions. And so for these foods we do eat: lemons, avocados, oranges, and grapefruits, especially at this time of year.

Yesterday was such a day. A day of craving bits of sun imported from elsewhere. So I bought things and made lunch, which looked something like this.

Winter technicolour salad

The salad
Endive
Radicchio
Fennel
Avocado
Grapefruit
Blood orange
Walnuts (freshly shelled if possible)

The dressing
Walnut oil
Olive oil
Dark, aged balsamic vinegar
Lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Optional additions to make it into lunch
Smoked trout or mackerel / grilled chicken / feta

Wash the salads and cut into shards or strips, however strikes your fancy. Slice the fennel as thinly as possible, preferably.

Peel and cut the avocado into cubes or spears. Peel the grapefruit and blood orange and cut into chunks.

To make the salad more of a meal, add some cheese or bits of meat. I used smoked mackerel, which happened to be in the fridge, but I suspect smoked trout would be even better. Grilled strips of chicken would definitely be good, or a crumble of feta.

I make the dressing directly over the salad: a thin drizzle of walnut oil, slightly heavier  ribbon of olive oil, a few drops of thick, aged balsamic vinegar, and a few generous squeezes of lemon juice. Salt and pepper.

This entry was posted on 10 January 2019 at 14:32 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.