When life gives you blood oranges, you make this salad! Actually, friends gave them to me who had ordered them from Sicitrus. They were delicious. Small in size, but big in flavour! Not to mention the colours, wow, like a deed red sunset.
I decided to make this recipe from Ottolenghi’s cookbook NOPI, and it didn’t disappoint. It was meant as side to go with oven baked trout, but to be honest it stole the show. The fennel was an addition not mentioned in his recipe but I felt it really worked well together.
Especially the dressing was a winner: sweet, savoury and herby, a great combo with the rest of the ingredients. The dressing calls for lavender but I didn’t have that lying around so replaced it with rosemary, it worked a charm!
This recipe also works great with regular oranges, so no worries if you can’t get your hands on blood oranges.
Ottolenghi's Blood Orange & Fennel Salad with Burrata
(39 votes, average: 4.28 out of 5)
Loading...Ingredients
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1-2 tsp clear runny honey
- 2 rosemary sprigs or 1 tsp dried lavender
- 1 small garlic clove, grated
- 1 tbsp coriander seeds, toasted
- 1 fennel bulb, thinly sliced with a mandolin or vegetable peeler. Fronds set aside to serve.
- 2-3 (320g total) blood oranges, or 2 medium oranges
- 1 -2 burrata balls (or 4 separate ones if you're making separate plates per person)
- Coarse sea salt
- Ground black pepper
- To serve:
- Fennel fronds, or basil leaves, torn while dressing
Instructions
Dressing
Start by toasting the coriander seeds in a dry pan until fragrant, ± 1.5 minutes.
Place the oil in a small saucepan with the honey, rosemary (or lavender), garlic and a teaspoon of salt.
Bring to a simmer on a medium-low heat and remove at once, this will go very quickly.
Stir well and set aside until completely cool, then add the coriander seeds.
Assembling the salad
Cut the fronds of the fennel and slice the rest thinly with a mandolin or a vegetable peeler.
Add the fennel to a bowl and dress with a squeeze of fresh orange juice (± 1 tbsp) and season with pepper and salt.
On a large plate (or 4 separate smaller plates) divide a layer of of the fennel.
Trim off the the tops and bottoms from the oranges.
Cut down the sides of the oranges, following their natural curve, to remove the skin and white pith. Slice into ± 1 cm thick slices, and remove the pips.
Divide the orange slices over the plate(s), slightly overlapping, and place a burrata ball on top. Spoon the dressing over the cheese, orange and fennel. If you like you can remove the rosemary, the dressing has already been infused, but you can also keep it in if you think it's pretty.
Top with the fennel fronds or the basil leaves.
I wanted to love this salad, but I found the coriander off-putting as it dominated the plate
Ah that’s a shame! But it is quite a specific flavour, so I understand if you don’t like koriander seeds. But you can of course leave them out!