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Fennel-Celery Root Salad with Acorn Oil

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Fennel and Celery Root Slaw with Acorn Oil (5)This is such a good salad. Such. A. Good. Salad. 

Working in Italian kitchens most of my life, shaved fennel salad was basically an afterthought—I honestly didn’t know why we put it on the menu sometimes, since it just didn’t excite me. By the time service came around, it would often be a clumpy oily mess that I’d try to perch on top of a plate of fish. It wasn’t good, but it could have been. The  problem was how we were serving it. Shaved fennel makes a wonderful salad, but the longer it sits, and also, the finer it’s shaved, the quicker it loses it’s luster, losing it’s crisp texture and juicy bite. 

Fennel and Celery Root Slaw with Acorn Oil

The oil gives white vegetables a brilliant orange color.

Wild harvested water oak acorn oil from Foragers HarvestThis salad I was inspired to make after I went over to Sam Thayer’s house for dinner one evening a few winters ago. Sam said it was one of his favorites, and I was shocked how good, simple, and addictive it was. If you like fennel and celery root, heck, even if you don’t, you need to try making this or your own version. 

It’s easy. You take some celery root and grate it coarse, as you would for celery root remoulade or something similar, then you take fennel bulbs and cut them into relatively thick slices, about 1/4 inch or a little thinner. From there, you season it with a very healthy glug oil oil, which is important as grated celery root is dry, and pretty thirsty. Add a pinch or two of salt to taste, along with some fresh herbs (or not) and a little vinegar or lemon juice, and it’s one of the best ways I’ve had fennel in a salad. We ate it in the winter, but it is wonderful in the summer as a garnish to fish, chicken or pork. 

Water oak acorn oil from foragers harvest

Water oak acorn oil is the secret to the bright orange color. You can use any good tasting salad oil here though.

Acorn Oil 

Sam actually used his cold pressed hickory nut oil on the version he made for me, which was great too, but I wanted to show off the vivid color of his water oak acorn oil, so I used that. The video shows how striking it is, and how it stains food just like paprika. You can buy your own acorn and hickory nut oil from foragersharvest.com, along with a bunch of other awesome stuff like wild rice, hickory nut oil, t-shirts with plants on them, foraging books, dvds, and hand-made small batch preserves and other products that they make you can’t get anywhere else.

Fennel and Celery Root Slaw with Acorn Oil

Fennel salad with grated celery root, acorn oil and hickory nuts. The acorn oil turns everything bright orange.

Fennel and Celery Root Slaw with Acorn Oil
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Fennel and Celery Root Salad with Acorn Oil

Sliced fennel and grated celery root is a great slaw-type salad to add to your repertoire.
Prep Time10 mins
Course: Appetizer, Salad
Cuisine: American
Keyword: Acorn Oil, Celery root, Fennel
Servings: 4

Ingredients

  • 1 12 oz celery root peeled and grated to yield about 3 cups
  • 2 medium or 1 large bulb of fennel 6-8 oz cut into small 1 inch x ¼ inch thick julienne strips
  • ¼ teaspoon kosher salt plus more to taste
  • 3 tablespoons acorn oil hickory nut oil, or another oil you like, such as extra virgin olive
  • 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar or to taste
  • Fennel fronds chopped like parsley, to garnish (optional)
  • Toasted nuts pictured are hickory nuts (optional)

Instructions

  • Mix the fennel and celery root with the oil, salt, and vinegar and chopped fennel fronds if using. Double check the seasoning, adjust as needed, and serve.
  • The salad can be made ahead a few hours, and will be good for a day or two.

Video

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  1. Acorn Oil says:
    November 27, 2020 at 3:14 pm

    […] Fennel salad with grated celery root, acorn oil and hickory nuts. The acorn oil turns everything bright orange. See the recipe for the salad here.  […]

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🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Last entry. I’ve saved t 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Last entry. I’ve saved the smallest, fern gulliest plant for last. 

False Mermaid Weed (Floerkea proserpinacoides) is a good little plant Sam Thayer showed me. It’s tiny, as in all the photos are from me on my belly, in a wet ditch. It’s so small it’s hard to get the camera to even focus on it (see pic with my finger for scale). 

Mermaid weed likes wet areas, like ditches and spots that hold a bit of water (perfect mosquito habitat😁). 

Like chickweed, Floerkia greens are like nature’s Microgreens. They’re in the Limnanthaceae, (a new-ish group of brassicas) and like the Toothwort form earlier this week, you’ll taste a strong mustard-family flavor in a mouthful of their tender stems. 

They’re literally wild mustard sprouts, and, unlike other wild sprouts (garlic mustard 🤬) they stay sprouts, and, they actually taste good. 

It has a wide range over much of the eastern and western U.S., and is listed as secure globally, but is endangered in some states and shouldn’t be disturbed in those places. 

I’m lucky enough to have some large colonies near me so I do clip a few handfuls each year-my annual reward for removing some of the garlic mustard nearby, that, along with atvs, dirt bikes, and contamination from local water pollution, is one of the biggest threats to this tiny green. 

#floerkiaproserpinacoides 
#wildsprouts #mustardsprouts #ferngully #tiny #foraging #mermaid #🧜‍♀️
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Virginia Bluebells (Merten 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) are one of the most beautiful harbingers of spring I know, as well as one of the most delicious. 

They’re in the Borage family, along with the namesake plant, Comfrey (which I only eat a few flowers of occasionally) and Honeywort. 

The flavor of the greens, like borage, has a rich flavor some people might describe as mushroomy or fishy, but after a just a few moments of cooking (30-60 seconds) they get mild and delicious, with a subtle bitterness. It’s a good bitter though-nothing like dandelions or garlic mustard that aren’t fit to be in the same basket, let alone on the same plate. 

The shoots are sweet and delicious, much more mild than the greens. As they can grow to be over a foot long, they’re almost more of a vegetable than a leafy green, depending on when you harvest them. 

Bluebells love moist, rich soil, but you don’t have to go to the woods to get them. Many people know Virginia Bluebells as a garden plant, and they can make a great edible addition to your landscape.

#virginiabluebells #foraging #ephemerals #springwildflowers #wildfoodlove #mertensiavirginica
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Narrow-leaved Wild Leek / White Ramp (Allium burdickii) 

If you’re in a ramp patch you might occasionally see some with white stems (pic 1,2). These are a cousin to the more common variety with much larger leaves and red stems (pic 3,4,5)

Allium burdickii is not as common as the red-stemmed variety, and in every ramp patch I’ve been in, the white ramp is heavily outnumbered. 

Where I harvest, I like to leave them alone, and mark the areas where they grow with sticks or middens on the ground so I can go back in the fall and help them spread their seeds. I also try and remove garlic mustard when I see it-a much more imminent threat in my mind to ramps than foragers out to gather some leaves. 

2020 was a banner year for ramp seeds, and you can still help the plants right now (pic 7) as some seed heads are still full and would love for you to give them a shake as you walk by. 

#alliumburdickii #ramps #ephemerals #foraging #spring
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 #4: Erythronium leaves E 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

#4: Erythronium leaves 

Erythronium (Trout Lily) are another ephemeral that I see widespread in my ramp patches, there’s at least 32 species world-wide, with at least one endangered species in MN (Dwarf Trout Lily). 

They’re a beautiful, delicious plant I eat every year, but I can’t recommend serving them to the general public. Plenty of people say these are edible, but also emetic if eaten in “quantity”. 

I can tell you, at least with E. albidum and E. americanum I’ve eaten, that some people are much more sensitive than others, so if you want to make a salad to serve people, make sure they’re comfortable eating it, and use a few leaves as a garnish. 

Funny enough, I didn’t learn about these from a foraging book. Like knotweed, I learned about them from one of my favorite chefs: Michel Bras, one of the most influential chefs of the turn of the 21 century. 

Any chef that works with wild plants owes a debt to Bras. His book, although a little dated now, still teaches me new things all the time. While flipping through the book I also caught a recipe using tansy flowers 😳 that I’d probably pass on. 

The whitefish crusted with sunflower seeds is a dish of mine from 2012, and an example of how I eat the leaves: a few at a time, as a garnish. 

#troutlily #erythronium #michelbras #ephemerals #foraging
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwor 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #3: Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata) is another beautiful spring wildflower that loves to grow in the same habitat you’ll see ramps and spring beauty. 

Its small at first, but grows to a worthy size for eating as it flowers. It’s related to cabbage and mustard greens (Brassicaceae) and eating just a few leaves will give you a potent, spicy pop of mustard-family flavor reminiscent of horseradish. 

Eaten in combination with other things, like in a salad, the flavor becomes submissive and you’ll barely know it’s there. 

Some people eat the spicy roots shaped like canine teeth, but for the work I hardly think they’re worth it. 

A great wild spring green for the salad bowl-eat them leaves, tender stem, flowers and all🤤. 

#cutleaftoothwort #cadamineconcatenata #ephemeral #springedibles #foraging #wildfoodlove
🌱Ephemeral Week🌱 Plant #2 is Virginia water 🌱Ephemeral Week🌱

Plant #2 is Virginia waterleaf, and, I’m cheating a bit as it’s semi-ephemeral. The plant comes up in spring and goes to flower, but gives a second harvest of fresh growth in the fall, where other ephemerals I know do not. 

This is a great starter wild green-easy to recognize with the splashes of white on the leaves that may or may not be present. After you learn it though, don’t be surprised if, like me, you eventually pass it up for more delicious greens nearby. 

The plant gets tough quick, and the flavor is..meh, so I usually have small amounts of very young greens in blends of blanched and sautéed mixes. 

My favorite part is the wee flower buds, that, if you get at the right time, can be harvested in decent quantity and are good steamed as they’ll soak up oil sautéed. 

#hydrophyllumvirginianum #waterleaf #foraging #fueledbynature #weedeater
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