I haven’t celery rave in a long time, for no specific reason, maybe because I don’t enjoy peeling it. is that a good enough reason? maybe not.

In France we eat celery rave a lot, mainly in rémoulade. Rémoulade is grated celery with mayonnaise, so a big word for something quite simple. In this recipe, I combined it with the sweetness of fennel and scallops.

I have noticed that many Americans don’t like fennel nor liquorice, so if you belong to the fennel-haters category, you can replace it with thinly sliced zucchini and instead of fennel, you can use cumin seeds.

I have been making some mango vinegar and playing with it on some recipes other than salads, and I really like it on seafood.

When cooking the scallops, always add salt at the end, otherwise if added while cooking, the scallops won’t turn brown and will form water. Also, when browning scallops, make sure the butter won’t burn. If it does burn, you need to discard it and use fresh butter. Or alternatively, filter the sauce at the end, so that the sauce looks smooth with no butter residue.

Ingredients for 2

For the celery root purée

• 2 small heads of celery, peeled and diced (1 inch)
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp onion, chopped
• vegetable broth
• 1 tbs heavy cream
• salt and pepper

For the braised fennel

• 1 tbs onion, finely diced
• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 large fennel bulb, shaved with a mandoline
• juice of 1 orange
• salt and pepper

For the scallops

• about 5 grams butter
• 4 large scallops (fresh not frozen)
• 1 tsp honey
• 3 tbs mango vinegar
• Fleur de sel

Preparation

For the celery root purée

Heat olive oil in a pan and add onion, let them sweat and add celery root. Cover with broth and let cook until absorbed and until celery is tender. You might need to use more broth in the process. Adjust with salt. Mash with a potatoe masher and add cream. Stir well and keep mashing until smooth and homogeneous.

For the braised fennel

Heat olive oil in a pan. Add onions and fennel and let it cook until fragrant but not until the onion turns golden brown.Add fennel and orange juice, salt and pepper. Cover and let cook at slow heat until orange juice absorbed and fennel tender. Keep warm.

For the scallops

Melt butter in a pan. Add scallops and cook on both sides until golden brown, about 2 minutes each side. Remove from pan and keep warm. Add honey, stir well and deglaze with mango vinegar and stir well.

Using a rind, place purée at the bottom of the plate. Add fennel on top and scallops at the end. Drizzle scallops with fleur de sel. Pour sauce around or on top of scallops and serve hot. You might want to have your plates warmed up before plating.

It’s quite a fun way to eat lentils…lentils are very versatile and I think not popular enough especially since they’re highly nutritious. I have rarely seen them in restaurants other than in soups. In France they’re considered rustic, something you would eat during winter and with smoked sausage or meat. I like them with smoked fish like salmon or trout, it tones down the smokiness of the fish (if the fish is too smokey like my salmon, actually this salmon was too smokey and salty). Here I like the combination of a hearty rustic ingredient with a more elegant and refined one. I have always loved contrasts. They’re unexpected, interesting and always leave you a feeling of wanting more.

Lentils and spinach are among the ingredients French kids have a hard time eating, if you ask any kid in France what they don’t like to eat, they’ll probably say, j’aime pas les lentiles et j’aime pas les épinards! but obviously I don’t want to make this a generality.

You can also combine fresh salmon with smoked salmon, then you would need to cut both salmon in cubes. Here I striped the salmon since I only used the smoked kind.

Ingredients for 4

For the lentils

• 200 g lentils du Puy
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 carrot
• 1/2 onion
• 1 celery stick
• 1 clove
• salt
  

For the lentil vinaigrette

• 1 tbs hazelnut or walnut oil
• 1 tsp cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp whole grain mustard
• 1 shallot, finely chopped
• 1 tbs parsley, finely chopped
• salt and pepper

For the salmon marinade

• 4 large slices of good quality smoked salmon, cut in strips
• 1 orange
• zest of 1/2 orange
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1/2 tsp dill, chopped
• 1/4 tsp fennel pollen
• 1 tsp capers, chopped
• Piment d’Espelette
• Pepper

Preparation

In a pot of water cook lentils with clove, onion, carrot, celery, bay leaf and salt and cook until lentil are tender but not mushy. Drain and remove the cooked vegetables from the lentils and set aside. In a mixing bowl, prepare vinaigrette mixing all ingredients together.

Cut salmon in stripes, mix all ingredients of the marinade and pour over the salmon. Mix well to coat the salmon. Let it marinade in the refrigerator for about one to two hours.

Place a small amount of lentil salad in the middle of a plate (you can use a rind to mount the salad) and top with some salmon stripes. Drizzle some extra marinade on top.

I am not sure where I had this for the first time…maybe in Boston (since I lived there at some point in my life before moving to San Francisco) at a Slovenian’s friend’s house… or maybe not. I know it has something to do with New England, even though has nothing to do with New England’s cuisine in terms of flavors. I love this salad, it’s pungent, fresh, citrusy and has a very unique flavor due to candied ginger. I never had candied ginger other than in Japanese restaurants and served with sushi but it goes perfectly with sweet potatoes, as surprising as it may sound.

I think I tend to deviate more towards a vegan diet still using dairy and eggs (so I guess technically, it’s not vegan). I have not been enjoying eating fish either lately, and I have no idea why this is happening, maybe this has something to do with my horrible allergies and stuffed head. I prepared a beautiful trout dish last night since a friend came over for dinner, and could not enjoy it. Let’s hope this is just temporary, I want to be able to enjoy fish again! In the meantime, let’s go vegan!

What I love about this salad is the contrast in flavors and textures between the warm grilled potatoes and the cold spinach salad. The orange juice in the dressing enhances the natural sweetness of the potato and along with the garlic, really adds a very refreshing sensation at the first bite. This is not French, nor Italian, nor Mediterranean, but it’s really delicious, besides the grilled potato gives a little sweet finish to the dish!

Ingredients for 2

• 1 medium size sweet potato, peeled and sliced
• 1 cup baby spinach
• 2 tbs olive oil
• juice of one blood orange
• 2 tsp rice vinegar
• 1 scallion, chopped
• a few walnut, chopped
• 1 tsp candied ginger, chopped roughly
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Coat potatoes with some olive oil and vinegar, salt and pepper, then broil in the oven. When one side is golden brown, turn the other side and let it broil until it turns golden brown.

For the vinaigrette, mix all ingredients together (except the spinach).

Place spinach in one plate, then add nicely the potatoes on top and sprinkle with vinaigrette.

You can serve the potatoes hot, warm or cold to your preference.

The salmon got a little jealous and was raving to be coated with a citrusy orange sauce too, because he thought that not only canard can be made “à l’orange”, he was the perfect candidate for the title too…and he was. On peut faire plein de choses avec des oranges!

The fennel at my local grocery store has been so round, and perfect looking that I could not resist and bought a lot of those beautiful bulbs. After the shrimp salad, now the salmon dish. You might think that fennel-orange and fish-fennel are two déjà vu combinations, it might be, but the secret here is the broth that makes this salmon a wonderful fragrant dish. Then when you love something, you can never get enough of it.

What I like about this dish is is the lightness of its fragrance, the salmon already has a strong flavor so I don’t like to add too many spices and powerful ingredients to a naturally strong ingredient, then I think it is confusing to your palate when you eat it, well mine gets very sensitive and does get confused easily if too many strong ingredients are combined. C’est la confusion totale! I served this with barley pilaf, whose little crunchy texture accompanied the whole dish very well.

I used some herbs to enhance the broth and that’s basically where the fragrance comes from. I was so happy I finally planted a bunch of herbs in the garden, so let’s hope the three semi-abandoned cats hanging outside the house won’t come and dig them, I am not too familiar with cats’ behavior but seems like they like to play with plants…and catch birds…and seriously have been scaring me a little due to their giant size and the way they are staring at me and my bird through the windows, I haven’t felt any love coming this way.

Ingredients for 2

For the fish and fennel

• 2 salmon fillets, skinless
• 1 fennel bulb, sliced thickly
• Juice of 1 orange + zests
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• flour for coating the fish
• 2 tbs olive oil
• salt and pepper

For the broth

• 1 leek, cut in chunks
• 1 carrot, cut in chunks
• 2 celeri sticks
• 1 onion, cut in quarters
• 1 tomato cut in quarters
• 2 bay leaves
• 6-7 basil leaves
• 1 tsp fish fumet
• 6 black peppercorns
• 2 cups water

Preparation

Start preparing the broth, by adding all ingredients together with 2 or more cups of water. Let it simmer for one hour, adding more water if necessary. At the end of cooking time, when broth has reduced, you need about 1.5 cups broth. Drain and set aside.

Heat olive oil in a pan, and add fennel. Let it cook at high heat until both sides are golden brown (about 5-7 minutes), add salt and pepper. Add crush garlic, stir for about 30 seconds, then add 2 ladles of broth. Reduce heat and let it cook all the way through (about 15-20 minutes).

Heat olive oil in a pan. Coat fish with flour and saute in oil. Let it brown on both sides, then add orange juice, 2 ladles of broth and wine. Let it reduce.

I went grocery shopping yesterday and again I went crazy with fish and seafood. I have always thought I knew what red snapper was in French…in my mind I had no doubt it was “rougets” because of the red connotation (rouge = red) and rougets are red and very trendy nowadays in France, they’re served in many new and hype restaurants. Snapper looked a lot bigger but I though, oh well, anything American is bigger anyway. Yesterday I could feel I was wrong for all those years and when looking closely at the fish, I started having doubts. You might think, ok what’s the big deal, if she doesn’t know the translation. The thing is that I like to know what I eat and find out more about the fish and what it’s called in my mother tongue, wouldn’t you? Some people might think I am weird, and maybe I am.

For a while I was just staring at the fish and could not make up my mind if I was going to buy it or not. I was somehow worried that snapper would be perche du Nil which I refuse to eat. It’s been exported in France from countries like Kenya, and other African countries and it’s one of the most invasive specie you can find; it destroys every other specie around and is somehow like a parasite. Since its introduction in some African lakes, the other species that lived there, are all extinct and it created many environmental issues in those regions. I am not sure if perche du Nil is grown or sold in the US, and would hope not.

After searching all over the place, I was releaved that Snapper is not perche du Nil, but it’s called Vivaneau. Honestly I have never heard that name before yesterday. Don’t you think it’s such a cute name? sounds like the name of a kid with rosy cheeks from the 18 th century, “hello, my name is Vivaneau, nice to meet you”. First I could not believe a fish would be called Vivaneau, then I had to come to the conclusion that it was its proper name, even though there are a lot of different species in that category.

Anyway, that mysterious snapper ended up in a skewer and I was glad I learnt Vivaneau is living among many in the ocean. Snapper tends to have a fragile texture, so if you overcook it, it will break.

Fennel, orange and white fish are some of my favorite ingredients, they blend beautifully together. This dish is so simple and quick but still delicious and flavorful, let’s not forget healthy.

Ingredients for 3 kebabs

• 1 lb red snapper fillets, cut in large cubes (about 2.5 inches)
• 1/2 red bell pepper, cut in large cubes
• 1 large fennel bulb, shredded
• 1/2 onion, sliced

For the marinade

• juice of 1 small lemon
• 1 tsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbs olive oil
• Szechuan pepper

For the vinaigrette

• 1 tbs dill, chopped
• 2 tbs olive oil
• juice of 1/2 large orange
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 1 tbs kalamata olives, chopped
• 1 garlic clove, crushed
• salt and pepper

Preparation

In a mixing container mix snapper pieces with marinade ingredients, place in the refrigerator and marinate for about 2 hours.

In a pan, add olive oil and brown onions. Add fennel and cook at low heat until the fennel is tender, almost melting. Add salt and pepper.

Prepare vinaigrette, by mixing all ingredients together.

Start making kebabs using bamboo skewers, (previously soaked in water to prevent them from burning). Alternate a piece of fish with a piece of bell pepper. Sprinkle with Szechuan pepper and salt and broil under broiler. Do not over cook, fish is very tender and might break.

Serve with fennel fondue and kebabs on top. Drizzle with orange-olive vinaigrette.

I was wondering why americans are not too fond of fennel and anis, liquorice, etc…Maybe it’s a flavor they were not used to growing up. I don’t know. The first time I tasted a mango, a Cambodian friend of mine had me try it, I must have been 12-13 years old, and I hated it. I thought it tasted like detergent powder and I had to spit it out. Well, years have passed, and luckily, my tastes have changed, and I love mango now! Funny how the palate that had not been exposed to something, reacts in an “unfriendly” way.

I remember one summer in Italy at the neighbor’s house, she served a salad of oranges as appetizer and I was somehow reluctant to eat it since I never ate oranges that way, but I thought that would be a great idea only  if this would taste good…and it did. The salad was fresh, with a nice peppery dressing. I loved it. I have seen a similar way to serve oranges in Moroccan cuisine, and I loved the idea.

Mâche salad is becoming trendy again, and besides from its pleasant flavor, it has lots of vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxydants and Omega 3! So a great nutritional little salad to be consumed without moderation.

Ingredients for 2

• 1 juicy navel orange, sliced crosswise
• 2 cups mâche
• 1 fennel bulb, cut in small cubes
• kalamata olives

For the vinaigrette

• 3 tbs olive oil
• 1 tsp orange juice
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• 1 tsp raspberry vinegar
• 1/3 tsp cumin powder
• salt and pepper

Preparation

Wash fennel, and cut in small cubes. You can cut the stems as well, it adds some nice color. Peel orange, and cut crosswise, cut off the border. Wash mâche.

For the vinaigrette, mix ingredients together. Add some vinaigrette to the mâche and mix well.

Place some salad at the bottom of the plate, top with fennel, and oranges. Add olives on top. Sprinkle with remaining vinaigrette.