Still Life with Fennel, by Gilly Reeves-Hardcastle.
Recipe below: Portale’s Roasted Fennel Salad with Blood Orange and Black Rice
Flavors from Italian American holiday celebrations past lie embedded in my brain, starting at Thanksgiving and working through to New Year’s. Fennel stands out. That memory starts with the foreign and inappropriate-seeming (at the time) plate of raw fennel my grandmother trotted out between the Thanksgiving turkey and pecan pie (I later learned that raw fennel is a Puglian palate cleanser), as well as the orange and fennel salad that was always part of my childhood Christmas Eve. My birthday falls in between those holidays, and this year fennel played a part in that, too. For my birthday dinner I wanted to try Alfred Portale’s just-opened Italian restaurant called, of all things, Portale. I’ve long been a fan of the chef who opened Gotham. It has been a place for anniversaries and other special occasions for all of its 35 years (my parents took me there to celebrate the publishing of Pasta Improvvisata, my first cookbook). I respected him for sticking to his 12th Street location and not branching out to Tokyo or Las Vegas (although he did briefly have a steakhouse in Miami). You’d almost always see him at Gotham. A little guy, nervous, shiny bald, trim and fit, handsome.
He has now opened his first Italian place, which he has evidently wanted to do for a long time. I’m not going to review the restaurant here—the food was almost excellent (I did have a little problem with the short rib carpaccio concept)—but I did want to mention the fennel and orange salad I ordered, one of my all-time favorite things to eat around the holidays.
He used a mix of roasted and raw fennel, a new approach for me. I’ve only done raw. Also, the addition of black rice was interesting. It added color and texture and heft. For my home version I thought of replacing it with Israeli couscous or wheat berries, but then figured, just this once go against your nature and make it as the chef intended. So I did. It was delicious. Not exactly the same as Portale’s, but considering that I didn’t really know how that had been constructed, it was pretty close.
The rice Chef Portale uses for this salad is venere vero, a black variety from the Lombardy and Piedmont regions. Look for it online or at Italian specialty shops. It takes a little longer to cook than regular white rice, but you cook it the same way.
Portale’s Roasted Fennel Salad with Blood Orange and Black Rice
(Serves 4)
3 large fennel bulbs, trimmed, 2 cut widthwise into ¼-inch-thick slices, 1 very thinly sliced with a sharp knife or a mandolin; also save and lightly chop a handful of the fronds
Extra-virgin olive oil
Sea salt
Coarse ground black pepper
1 cup cooked venere nero black rice
½ cup golden raisins, plumped in a little warm water if hard
1½ tablespoons sherry wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
A big pinch of sugar
1 big head frisée or chicory, torn into bite-size pieces
1 small shallot, thinly sliced
4 blood oranges, peeled and sliced into rounds
A big handful of shelled unsalted pistachios, preferably Sicilian
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the thickly sliced fennel on a sheet pan, drizzle it with olive oil, and season it with salt and black pepper. Roast until tender but still firm and lightly browned, 15 minutes or so.
Mix the black rice with the raisins and the fennel fronds, and season with salt and black pepper.
Set out four salad plates. Make a circular pattern alternating slices of orange with slices of roasted fennel along the edges of each plate.
In a small bowl combine the frisée, the raw fennel, and the shallot.
Whisk together the vinegar and the mustard and sugar. Whisk in 3 tablespoons of olive oil, and season with salt and black pepper. Taste for a good balance of acid, sweet, and mellow, and adjust if necessary.
Pour half of the vinaigrette over the rice and the rest onto the frisée. Toss both.
Portion the rice into the middle of each salad plate, spreading it around in a thin layer. Top each one with some frisée mix. Scatter on the pistachios. Serve. Or you can present it family style on one big platter, as I did. See photo.
Note: At the restaurant the rice and the roasted fennel were still slightly warm. That’s how I served it at home, too.