All Things Chill

Cecil hooked it up with some bonuses with my regular produce from Joe’s @ Pike Place Market… so I did a quick search on google to find a salad that’d fit what I picked up – basil, fennel and oranges. On the bus ride home, I repeated the steps for a quick salad from Mele Cotte in my head. Her recipe follows:

1 fennel bulb
1 navel oranges
1-2 shallots
¼ cup orange juice
2 Tbsp. red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
salt and black pepper to taste
3 basil leaves*, chiffonade

Prepare the fennel by removing stalks and fronds (the green leafy dill-looking extremities). Cut about ¼-inch off the bottom. Cut fennel in ½ then julienne. Set aside. Peel oranges and remove all the white pith. Slice.

Then, I just whisked the other ingredients in a bowl and added a enough dressing to the fennel and oranges in another bowl to coat well. Then I added some protein. Hee hee.

Pat scallops very dry with a paper towel and coat with Kosher salt and black pepper. Sear scallops in butter over medium high heat and DON’T TOUCH FOR 2 MINUTES – you’ll get a golden brown color that you won’t believe. When they’re done, carefully place them on top and serve with bread and a glass of white.

It’s almost September, which means it’s the start of fennel season. If you haven’t had it yet, it smells and faintly tastes like black licorice BUT DON’T LET THAT DISCOURAGE YOU LOL (I hate black licorice too). Something amazing happens when you combine it with the sweet orange juice and the tart red wine vinegar… it seems to refresh yourself and give you such a clean taste in your mouth. The scallops didn’t hurt either. Haha.

Enjoy!

~Spec

This entry was posted on Friday, August 29th, 2008 at 10:59 am and is filed under Cheap [and GOOD] Eats, Cooking Culture, Cuisine, Recipes. 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.