Because you always need a little green: Arugula Salad with Grilled Shrimp, Asparagus and Fennel

Basically fennel is my new favourite thing. I discovered roasting it and then sprinkling it with lemon and I nearly died from joy. The funny thing is I hate anise, black licorice, sambuca, pastis or any other products with that horrible taste, but somehow when you roast and (I prayed…) grill fennel, it loses the bitterness of its licorice flavour. Now I can sometimes even eat fennel raw. I could eat it by the pound roasted. Grilled is the next best thing.

This is a salad for anyone who doesn’t like salad. Yes, you put the grilled vegetables on top of a mound of arugula but the basil, lemon juice, balsamic vinegar and olive oil, along with a fair bit of salt in the vinaigrette make this completely delicious. For the Great Christmas Party 2009 I left the shrimp in a separate bowl for the vegetarians to avoid and instead of tossing the vegetables with the arugula I lay them on top to jive with the party’s theme of “layers”. Also, I didn’t realize how gross shrimp looked when they’re just in a big bowl together. Next time I will work on presentation…food sensitivities and choices messing everything up, story of my life.

garlic (don’t even need to chop it)
a bunch of fresh basil (make sure it smells like something when you buy it, or it won’t taste like anything when you eat it)
salt
olive oil
1 lb of shrimp (optional). The recipe says to butterfly them but do as you like.
a large bulb of fennel cut in wedges
asparagus
balsamic vinegar
lemon juice
pepper
arugula

Simple marinade/vinaigrette: throw the garlic cloves, basil and half the salt in the food processor or blender (the blender will be tricky because there’s no liquid in there yet, but go for it if it’s your only option). Then add blend again. Preferably you do want to add the oil after the other things are mixed so it emulsifies better.

If you’re a shrimp-eater, take 2 tbsp of the marinade and add it to the shrimp. The rest is for the dressing.

Grill the shrimp, fennel and asparagus for about 4 minutes per batch. Don’t layer them on top of each other or they won’t cook evenly and they won’t cook any faster anyway.

Add the balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, remaining salt and pepper to the basil oil dressing.

Either toss the shrimp, fennel and asparagus with the dress or toss things seperately to your liking. There’s a fair bit of dressing so you could use more than the called-for 4 cups of arugula. It seems like such a waste when you get through a salad and there’s a pool of dressing at the bottom of the salad bowl. Bread also works, but green is probably better for you. This recipe is from Bonnie Stern’s HeartSmart: The Best of HeartSmart Cooking. She also recommends using the vinaigrette on potato salad, which sounds like a very, very good idea. I would also recommend using it to marinade or dress any kind of white fish.

Please, please try this salad.