A Secret-Weapon Salad for Your Holiday Table

Using an ingredient everyone loves but often forgets to employ 🍊 🌶️

A QUICK GLANCE AT THE CALENDAR, if you dare, indicates that Hannukah is well under way, Christmas and Kwanzaa are almost here, and then—boom—that whole New Year’s Eve celebration/nightmare is upon you.

In the Dark Theatre of My Mind, I suspect that the question on everyone else’s minds while planning festive meals through 2023 is: “We have so much food, do we even need a salad?” (STAGE DIRECTION: Someone crosses the word “salad” off a giant scroll. Emily faints.)

Obviously, no question could make me sadder. But I continue, my heart a golden trumpet, sounding a clarion song into the wind and noise of this wretched, beautiful world, to say: Of course you want a salad.

I get the hesitation. We get overwhelmed—and who wants to wash and dry a large pile of sandy leaves when your house is clogged with humanity.

Which is why, at this time of the year, a citrus salad is the most powerful meal-planning weapon known to man. And the salads I have for you today and tomorrow are beautiful, easy citrus bouquets. When you bring them to the table during or after a rich or heavy entrée, they will make everyone stop for a split second to appreciate the luxury and meaning of a holiday, not to mention how one dish complements/highlights/offsets another. The roast is so gorgeous, with its crisp and fatty bits, but how about a taste of sweet, cold, tart citrus now?

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Forget greens/leaves entirely, if you wish, because when it comes to citrus as a salad course, you’d do perfectly fine to offer nothing more than chilled plates paved with orange slices, drizzled with some good olive oil, a tiny squeeze of lemon, and showered with flakey salt—maybe some finely chopped shallot or green olives, a scattering of pomegranate seeds.

But today (for everyone) and then again tomorrow (for paid subscribers) I have some classic, crowd-pleasing combinations that, with just a sliver more effort, will make you feel like a rock star—the Elton John type, not the Bob Dylan type. You can prepare the citrus for these salads ahead of time; keep it in the fridge in an airtight container along with the precious juices produced during the peeling process (mix those into some seltzer).

Speaking of the peeling/slicing/supreming/segmenting process, which I consider fun and others see as a chore: Think of it in terms of exactly which oranges and grapefruits get eaten and which occasionally get left lying around until they dry up. The peeled and sliced or supremed ones are NEVER not devoured. So go ahead and dispatch a lot of fruit right now. You can serve the surplus at breakfast from a pretty cut-glass bowl—or from the Tupperware. And if you’re into candied peels, you’ve just hit the ingredients jackpot.

I’ll be honest with you: if you wanted to make this salad right this minute but found you had no herbs (or jalapeños) in your house, it would be pretty wonderful anyway.

*RECIPE: Fennel and Orange Salad, with Shaved Jalapeños

Serves 6

The name is practically the recipe. So simple! I just love the combination of olive oil and citrus fruit (probably because olives and citrus are so wonderful together). And lemon makes oranges even orangier. If you don’t care for jalapeños (what?), leave them out, but don’t tell me about it. I find them to be extremely palate awakening. Plus, you’re slicing them so thinly here that they’re not remotely overpowering. They whisper.

• 1 large or two small heads fennel, trimmed and shaved on a mandoline—or just very thinly sliced

• Juice (about 3 tablespoons) and zest of 1 lemon

• 6-8 oranges (navel, Cara Cara, blood; or a mix), depending on their size, peeled and sliced crosswise into thin rounds

• 1 jalapeño, seeded, shaved into thin slices crosswise (use your mandoline)

• 8 to 10 large mint leaves, stacked and thinly sliced crosswise (chiffonade); basil would also be good here, too, but mint with citrus is my kind of flavor explosion

• 2 to 3 tablespoons of your best olive oil

• Flakey sea salt (I use Maldon)

• Balsamic vinegar, several generous tablespoons, to finish

Toss the fennel gently with 2 to 3 tablespoons of the lemon juice and about half of the zest, more to taste. Arrange it in a loose jumble on a platter (a chilled one, if you have the wherewithal). Top with the cold orange slices, creating a pretty devil-may-care layer, then decorate this with the shaved jalapeños. Scatter with mint. Drizzle all over with the olive oil, douse with balsamic vinegar, and give it a nice shower of flakey sea salt. You may also sprinkle on some of the remaining lemon zest. Now, dig in.

Fennel And Orange Salad, With Shaved Jalapeños

1.33MB ∙ PDF file

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DON’T FORGET

We did an all-citrus issue back in the very early days of the Department of Salad, including one with persimmon and walnuts. You might want to have a look at some of those if you’re feeling a bit more ambitious. And if you still insist upon a full-on tossed salad, I suggest the one below, which is from my 2017 book, and which you may have seen here before in an earlier issue. I’m plunking it down here again, for your convenience and because I consider it a Department of Salad origin story salad. No one I know does not love it.

*RECIPE: A Green and Herby Salad with Grapefruit and Avocado

Serves 4 or so, depending on how much everyone likes salad

• 1 cup or so herbs (a combination of mint and basil is my favorite), washed and dried, tough stems removed, thinly sliced (chiffonade)

• 1 or 2 pink grapefruits, depending on size, peeled and sectioned (aka supremed)

• 1/2 very small red onion, cut into very thin slivers, or finely chopped (reserve 1 tablespoon)

• Several big handfuls of thoroughly washed and dried greens—I use an assortment of mostly bitter (choose from watercress, arugula, radicchio, endive, even slivers of kale) but also soft (Boston, Bibb, or even tender red leaf lettuce)

• 1 or 2 avocados (alligator, not the giant shiny ones), peeled and cubed (do this last)

• My Usual Mustard Vinaigrette (below)

  1. Place the grapefruit sections and onion in a small bowl, and pour a good bit of the vinaigrette over it; toss gently and let it sit at room temperature while you tear the greens into bite-size pieces if they need it and make a chiffonade of the herbs; reserve a few shreds for garnish.

  2. Once you’re ready to serve, place the greens and herbs in a large serving bowl, arrange the fruit mixture attractively in the middle, sprinkle on the freshly cut avocado, and decorate it all with the reserved herbs and a little of the red onion. When you get it to the table, and everyone has seen how pretty it looks, fold it all together gently.

  NOTE: The dressing on the grapefruit and onions should be enough, but taste it after tossing and adjust. You can always bring extra dressing to the table in a little pitcher or in the damn jar

  My Usual Mustard Vinaigrette

  In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine 8 tablespoons olive oil, 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard, 3 tablespoons red wine vinegar, ½ teaspoon salt, freshly ground black pepper. Place the lid on the jar, and shake vigorously, until emulsified.

A Green And Herby Salad With Grapefruit And Avocado

1.12MB ∙ PDF file

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🥬 🥬ALSO, I’M WONDERING: Do you follow me on Instagram? My feed is not a consistent array of uniformly styled photos of perfect food, which I know is what I’m supposed to offer. But I get too bored. So it includes videos of giant pandas loudly eating carrots and personal crap representative of my bad personality. I’d love to have you. Go here: Emily’s Instagram

🥬 🥬🥬 That’s It! We’re done here! Paid subscribers should keep an eye peeled for another citrus salad tomorrow. It will be a shorty but a goody! In the meantime, if you feel like sharing the Department of Salad with friends or family who deserve it, please do so with the buttons below. Thanks for reading.