A recipe right out of Rolando Beramendi’s Autentico
As you might have noticed, I have mushrooms on my mind of late! The #5 sandwich is marvelous. This is another mushroom-centric dish, a mushroom fennel salad you can make at home—as is my workaday wont—in a matter of minutes. It’s one of the many dishes I’ve learned from my longtime friend Rolando Beramendi’s amazing cookbook, Autentico. In “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy,” I share my belief that “Good cooking is, ultimately, about being ourselves and letting the ingredients be themselves.” All of Rolando’s cooking is really well aligned with that statement, and it’s certainly true for this great spring salad. Rolando and I have a shared set of beliefs: start with world-class ingredients, study traditional foodways, keep things simple, and stay away from overcomplicating. This salad does all of those! Spring, in central Italy and in this part of the American Midwest, is mushroom season. Happily, there are now a couple of regular vendors at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, Argus Farm Stop, and more!
I did make some adjustments to the recipe, but I did it with Rolando’s advice in mind:
In the event that the reader should wish to modify, add or make other kinds of maneuvers in the kitchen, so long as these choices are made with respect to each and every one of the ingredients in the recipe and to those which are being added or deleted, and with respect to the original dish and the actual diners, then let them take place.
Rolando’s recipe calls for porcini, but we don’t generally get those fresh around Ann Arbor. Instead, I used oyster mushrooms from the market. Slice the mushrooms crosswise, relatively thinly. Slice a fresh fennel bulb thinly as well. It’s important to the eating experience that they’re sliced at the same thickness. The recipe is, in Italian, Segare, a reference to the “sawing,” that resembles the hand slicing of the vegetables. Like Rolando, I find the ratio of about one-to-one mushrooms to fennel to be ideal.
Arrange the mushrooms and the fennel on a large salad plate. Atop the platter, Rolando shaves on Tuscan Pecorino but since I was thinking Midwest, I decided to use the Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese instead. Handmade by Andy Hatch in Dodgeville, Wisconsin, it’s just a bit under a year old right now and it’s got the nice dense sort of texture one would get from the Tuscan sheep cheese—you can find it at the Deli, Cream Top Shop and at Mail Order. Rolando has a nice touch adding a few fresh mint leaves to the salad, which makes the dish even more delicious. Fennel fronds are a delightful addition as well.
After all that, add some really good, very coarsely ground black pepper—Rolando and I are both partial to Tellicherry but all of the peppercorns we have from Épices de Cru at the Deli are fantastic! I’m especially enthused about the peppercorns from India’s Elephant Valley. (The peppercorns come from the Indian region of Kerala, about 1000 miles to the southwest of Calcutta, where Vivekananda was born.) Squeeze on some fresh lemon juice, and finish the mushroom fennel salad with a bold peppery Tuscan olive oil. If you’re eating vegan—or even if you’re not—I did try the salad without the cheese, with toasted Piemontese hazelnuts and it was pretty darned good.
