Excerpt from Ari’s Top 5 enews
A wonderful winter salad you can make at home in a matter of minutes

I returned from a recent trip to San Francisco feeling energized, with new connections, and an even deeper conviction that the community of caring people across the country is far larger and more significant than the skewed focus of news coverage or the fleeting dynamics of political power might suggest. I was in the city teaching for ZingTrain (including folks from Bi Rite’s Family of Businesses, Delfina, Four Barrel, Josey Baker, Souvla, and more) and doing a beautiful book event for an amazing group at the remarkable Black Bird Bookstore and Cafe in the Sunset—if you’re in San Francisco, go visit and say hi to Kathryn and the crew—they’re stocking our books and pamphlets on their shelves!
I also came back with some really good California oranges from the farmers market at the Ferry Building. Wanting to put them to good use, I decided to make a fennel salad. Using what we had in the house from before we left for the trip, following more than a few decades of what I guess I could call culinary instinct, I broke the oranges into segments and then cut comparably sized slices of fresh fennel. I added a few black olives, Spanish almonds, and some filets of Fishwife’s anchovies. Dressed with a little wine vinegar and good olive oil. Lots of black pepper and a bit of Marash red pepper flakes. It was terrific. Sweet and savory. Soft and crunchy. Land and sea. Spicy and gentle. Quick to fix, fantastic to eat!
Turns out, which I didn’t know when I did it, that it’s a typical salad to make in Sicily. Whatever its origins—an exotic island in the Mediterranean or some back culinary corner of my mind—it’s delicious! And, I learned later, I’m not alone in liking it. Alix Lacloche, a French chef who did a two-year stint working for Amaryll Schwertner at the wonderful Boulette’s Larder in the Ferry Building about 150 feet from where I found the oranges last week, is also a big fan.
Lacloche, it turns out, often cooks in the same way I do, sharing with an interviewer from Gannet that “throwing a meal together on the fly with leftovers from work is how she usually eats.” You can most definitely make some delicious dishes that way, especially when, as per what I wrote in the “Life Lessons I Learned from Being a Line Cook” chapbook, keep a high-quality pantry stocked and ready to draw upon at the last minute. Lacloche, very much aligned with this approach, says, “I always cook what I like to eat.”
The fresh orange, fennel, and anchovy salad, it turns out, is one of her go-tos.
This is a dish that I used to make at La Tête dans les Olives in Paris. It’s a Sicilian orange salad – great for November when you’re sad, it’s going to be winter, but you have oranges.
You can put the salad together in under 10 minutes, making a lovely to-look-at and delicious-to-eat dinner that will surely brighten one of the cold winter days we have coming!