If there is any dish that justifies the purchase of a Japanese-style mandoline (get a cut-resistant glove to go with it), the fennel salad is absolutely it. Fennel has been looking kind of sadly small lately--big on the fronds, but less on the actual bulb--but a trimmed bulb with the core taken out of it, sliced on the 2-3 mm setting, can make one little bulb go a long way.
I also made the dressing with some of the reserved grapefruit juice from supreming grapefruits for this dish along with some extra-virgin olive oil and salt, and while I will make this again with some fronds as a garnish of sorts, this is this salad at its essence: slightly-wilted slices of fennel in a grapefruit vinaigrette with supremes of grapefruit adding some bitter and sweet notes.
[And then I'll add, like, a nice little slaw kind of crunch to the dish. Take the pancake, open it up, put the crab meat inside, a little bit of the fennel salad, tartar sauce, and then caviar.]
Fennel Seed Spiked Pork Roast Recipe
A big Boston butt pork roast is slathered with fennel seed, ouzo, and garlic, then slowly roasted on a bed of sliced onion and fennel for a magnificent main course. The cut reaches tender perfection in about 5 hours of roasting time.
This refreshing mandarin, fennel, and burrata salad packs tons of flavor. All the ingredients play well together and every bite is loaded with creamy burrata, anise-flavored fennel, a bright note of citrus, and an oniony kick from the chive blossoms.
While it’s been so damn hot, I’ve been looking for creative ways to not have to cook, and this is one of my favorite new hacks: I cured this filet of Sockeye salmon for 36 hours in a salt, sugar, and curry-inspired blend of spices from Gail Simmons’s Bringing it Home that she uses for a seared salmon recipe, and otherwise kept the rest of the recipe as-is with a lemon yogurt sauce and a crisp fennel salad.