This recipe will fill your kitchen with fragrant aromas of aniseed and asparagus, it’s heavenly.
Salads have a tendency to be bland and a bit limp. However this recipe proves that they don’t have to be. It marries together a unique combination of ingredients and is finished off with a vibrant dressing. Crisp ribbons of raw fennel and asparagus are tossed together with samphire. Then all the ingredients are enveloped in our zingy Aperol and orange sauce. Samphire is a variety of succulent from the parsley family and has a salty yet fresh flavour. If you cannot get your hands on it simply double the quantity of asparagus. Buying a bottle of Aperol specially for this recipe? We recommend that you make yourself a glass of Aperol spritz to enjoy alongside this salad. For further salad inspo check out this beetroot salad or this rice salad.
Method
- First segment the oranges by peeling the oranges and then using a knife cut out each segment of orange, taking care not to get any of the inner membranes of the orange segments.
- Juice the remaining cores of the oranges and mix the juice with the Aperol and olive oil and season well.
- Using a peeler, peel the bulb of fennel in ribbons and do the same with the asparagus. Place these ribbons into ice-cold water for a few minutes and they will crisp-up and really take shape.
- Add the samphire, orange segments, salad leaves and toss well. Dress with the Aperol dressing and mix well. Serve onto a plate and finish by peeling the Pecorino on top.
Ingredients
- 3 oranges
- 45ml Aperol
- 2tbsp olive oil
- 300g green asparagus
- 1 large fennel bulb
- 90g samphire
- A handful of salad leaves
- 15ml white wine vinegar or white balsamic
- 2 tsp of caster sugar or honey
- 100g Pecorino Romano
Top Tip for making Easy samphire salad
Samphire is now easily available at Tesco and Waitrose.
Chef, Food Writer, and Podcast Host Elişa Roche trained under Jamie Oliver as part of Channel 4 show Jamie's Kitchen before working at some of London's best restaurants. She has cooked at No10 Downing Street and for celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, U2, and Sir Paul McCartney.
She now hosts a podcast about careers in the food industry and loves to mentor newcomers. Before that, Elişa worked as Group Food Director and TI Media and then Future, commissioning, art directing, and producing food and drinks content across more than 20 magazines and their associated websites and special issues.