It takes a neighborhood and sometimes a bicycle!
This salad recipe is adapted from Hetty McKinnon’s salad cookbook Neighborhood. McKinnon is an Australian cook who currently lives in the Carroll Gardens neighborhood of Brooklyn but has hung her hat in the Mediterranean, Asia and France.
McKinnon’s love affair with main-dish salads started in 2011 in Surry Hills, Australia. A self-trained home cook, she started a salad delivery business, Arthur Street Kitchen, and delivered salads two days a week to her “salad subscribers” on her bicycle. You’ve got to love that kind of foodie enthusiasm and, of course, envy that kind of youthful energy.
These days McKinnon operates a community kitchen, Neighborhood Studio, in Brooklyn and writes cookbooks. She still, on occasion, makes salad deliveries on her bicycle.
McKinnon is driven by her belief that food is a social anchor in every neighborhood and that the sharing of a meal shapes the way people live and treat each other. As she sees it, people connect over food and, in the process, barriers fall. It’s one of those paradoxes; by sharing our differences, we discover the myriad ways we are the same.
This recipe would be a star on any table. It incorporates thin-sliced fennel that has been roasted in the oven under a savory layer of cream, broth, and gorgonzola cheese. The roasted fennel is tossed with the other salad ingredients just before serving and the cheesy-buttery sauce binds the whole dish together like a salad dressing. I’ve never thought of baking fennel and gorgonzola together but it is a great combination of flavors–the mild licorice flavor of the fennel and the full savory flavor of the gorgonzola complement each other perfectly.
You are going to love this salad. Why not bicycle some of your leftovers over to your neighbors?
Save RecipeIngredients
- 2 large fennel bulbs (trimmed and finely sliced)
- 1/2 C. cream
- 1/2 C. vegetable stock
- 7 oz. gorgonzola cheese (crumbled)
- 5 thyme sprigs (leaves picked)
- 1/2 pound cherry tomatoes (halved)
- One and a half 15-ounce cans of cannellini beans (drained and rinsed) or freshly-cooked dry beans
- 1/2 C. black kalamata olives (torn)
- 2 C. baby spinach or baby arugula or a combination
- A few radicchio leaves (torn)
- 3 T. roughly-chopped flat-leaf parsley leaves
- 1/4 C. basil leaves (torn)
- 3 T. pine nuts (toasted)
- Sea salt and black pepper
- Whole cherry tomatoes and fennel sprigs for garnish
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
- Thinly-slice fennel bulbs and arrange the slices on a large rimmed baking tray. Mix the cream and the broth together and pour over the fennel. Crumble the gorgonzola cheese and sprinkle it over the fennel and the cream. Sprinkle thyme leaves over the fennel and season with a little salt and freshly-ground black pepper. Bake for 20 minutes until the fennel is tender and is beginning to brown. Scatter the halved cherry tomatoes on top of the roasted fennel and bake for another 5 minutes until the tomatoes have softened.
- Combine the roasted fennel and tomatoes with the drained and rinsed cannellini beans. Toss in the olives, spinach (or arugula) and the herbs. Scatter the toasted pine nuts over the top of the salad and garnish with a few sprigs of thyme and a few whole cherry tomatoes. Best served at room temperature.
This recipe is adapted from Hetty McKinnon’s Neighborhood. The book is available from Amazon. Here is the link: Amazon.
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