Autumn Salad with Fennel and Pomegranate
— Serves 4
Pomegranate seeds (arils) are wonderful in salads, contributing brilliant ruby color, sweet-tart taste, and bursts of juiciness. Fennel’s brilliant greenish-white color and gentle licorice flavor offset them perfectly. As finishing touches, scallions add a savory punch, and a simple pink-red cranberry balsamic vinaigrette rounds out the flavors.
*Items marked in green are available from The Gourmet Corner.
Ingredients
- 3 Tbs Cranberry balsamic vinegar
- 5 Tbs Extra-virgin olive oil
- La Baliene sea salt
- freshly ground black pepper
- 1 large or 2 small heads redleaf lettuce
- 1 medium fennel bulb
- 4-6 scallions
- 1 large or two small pomegranates. Look for pomegranates that feel heavy for their size and have smooth, unblemished skins. Avoid fruit with soft spots, indicating they have been bruised.
Cranberry Balsamic Vinaigrette
In a small container with a tight-fitting lid, combine the vinegar, and olive oil. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Cap the container and shake well. Taste the dressing and adjust seasonings. Refrigerate until 1/2 hour before use.
Seeding Pomegranates
If you are the sort who finds gently coaxing gleaming crimson arils out of the cream-white nooks and crannies that make up the interior of a pomegranate to be a contemplative, soothing process, by all means have at it. Arils thus shucked can be refrigerated in a covered container for a day or two until needed.
If, on the other hand, you find the sheer tedium of having to pry all those little arils out of the labrynthine interior of a pomegranate to be a major barrier to eating them more than once a year, try this shortcut technique:
- Score the pomegranate vertically into quarters, cutting through the rind but not into the seeds. Break the fruit apart into quarters.
- Hold a quarter pomegranate rind-up in one hand, then place the hand in a large, deep bowl ( a shallow or too-small bowl will not catch all the juice droplets).
- Briskly tap the rind of the pomegranate with the back of a large, heavy wooden or metal spoon. The seeds will be whacked loose from the rind and inner membranes of the pomegranate, falling through your fingers into the bowl. If no seeds are falling out, hit the rind a bit harder, always using the back of the spoon — the side of the spoon will damage the seeds, even through the rind.
- When the quarter-pomegranate has released all its seeds, fish out any bits of membrane from the bowl.
- Repeat with the rest of the fruit. Arils removed by this technique are usually somewhat broken, so should be prepared no more than a day ahead.
Preparing the Salads
Wash and dry the redleaf lettuce, then use a paring knife to cut away the thick central rib from each leaf. Cut the fennel vertically into quarters, then slice vertically as thinly as you can — this is an excellent job for a mandoline, if you have one. Slice the scallions on the diagonal as thinly as you can.
Overlap lettuce leaves into a circle on each of four salad plates, stem ends toward the center of the plate. Mound the fennel slices over the lettuce, then sprinkle the pomegranate arils over the fennel. Sprinkle the scallions over the pomegranate.
Give the vinaigrette a thorough shake to re-mix it, then drizzle it over the salads. Serve immediately.
Tags: fennel, pomegranates