Shaved Fennel and Olive Salad
Shaved Fennel and Olive Salad
A delightful shaved fennel salad, with hints of orange and lemon, straight from the kitchen at Estela, in NYC.
Ingredients
- 1 large or 2 small fennel bulbs, cleaned and outer leaves discarded
- 2/3 cup pitted chopped green Castelvetrano olives (**I substituted oil-cured black olives instead, see note below)
- 2 TBSP extra-virgin olive oil plus more for drizzling
- 1/2 TBSP Champagne or white wine vinegar
- 1 tsp red pepper flakes
- Fresh ground black pepper, to taste
- Flaky sea salt to taste
- Zest of 1 orange (1-2 tsp)
- Zest of 1 lemon (1-2 tsp)
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 3 ounces shaved provolone cheese (**I substituted an aged gouda instead)
Directions
- Step 1 Cut the tops and stems off the fennel bulbs. Thinly slice the stems into rounds about 1/8 inch thick and coarsely chop the fronds. Place the fronds and stems in a bowl with the chopped olives. Drizzle with the oil, vinegar, red pepper flakes, orange zest, and salt. Toss until well coated.
- Step 2 Using a mandolin, shave the fennel into thin slices. In a shallow dish, season the fennel with the lemon zest and lemon juice and toss again to coat.
- Step 3 To serve, scoop the olive, fennel frond mixture onto the center of each plate and then top with a bed of shaved fennel. Grate or shave the cheese on top. Drizzle with extra olive oil and sprinkle with flaky sea salt and fresh ground pepper.
Back in the day, before I was a country bumpkin, I prided myself in being a New York City foodie. I made it my mission to try all the hot new restaurants in town and would scour the food mags weekly for openings, reviews, and hints on how to score that sought after rezzie. One or two nights a week were set aside for dinner dates with my best girlfriends at these destinations and I almost prided myself in the fact that I never went to the same place twice. The restaurant scene in New York is fickle like that, the majority of these restaurants are “hot” for a hot second and then you never hear about them again. This probably sounds crazy, for a number of reasons – especially to a non-New Yorker – but there are just so many incredible restaurants that I felt my logic was sound. Those restaurants that were deserving of a second visit had to be so good that they were worth it.
But there are a few exceptional chefs that manage to rise above this fate and persevere; one of them (and one of my personal favorites) is Ignacio Mattos of Estela. Estela is so good that it earned Mattos a James Beard Award nomination for Best New Restaurant of the Year. So good that I broke my one dining experience rule. And so good, that I’ve now been to Estela five times since it opened in 2013, which is pretty impressive considering we moved to the ‘burbs in 2014 and I get back to the city once in a blue moon these days.
There is so much to love about Estela, which serves up spirited and inventive Mediterranean dishes, in an intimate hole in the wall spot perched over Houston Street. I’ve tried to make it a point to try as much of the menu as possible, but without fail, I cannot resist ordering the shaved fennel salad every time we go (which is now a staple on the Cafe Altro Paradiso menu, Mattos’ other NYC outpost). At last – the point of this whole post in the first place! It may seem like such a simple salad since it’s essentially composed of only 3 ingredients: fennel, olives and cheese, but don’t let that fool you. The subtle flavors of each individual ingredient on this plate are exquisite together, creating a symphony of tastes that are memorable beyond the salad course and, truly, beyond the whole meal.
The recipe I’m outlining above is for the original Estela dish (as well as I remember it anyways!), but I took the creative license to change up two of the components – swapping out the green Castelvetrano olives for black ones and the provolone cheese for a cave aged gouda. I’m not sure of Mattos would approve of these changes or not, but I thought it was important to make the recipe my own. I give you the option to do as you please, but as a chef who is always trying explore and experiment with new flavors, I always think it’s fun to put your own twist on things. I almost never make the same dish twice, even my own, so why treat this recipe any differently? Variety is the spice of life – especially when it comes to spicing things up in the kitchen!
