Shaved Fennel and Bok Choy Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette

Sometimes cooking is all about tradition and following certain rules about what ingredients classically belong together in a given type of cuisine. Other times, cooking is about what’s delicious and creating new combinations based solely on great flavor. What I like about Girl in the Kitchen, the new book by Stephanie Izard of which I received a review copy, is that it follows the latter approach. Izard, the first and only woman to win the Top Chef title, strives to balance a mix of flavors in every dish to “make your whole mouth happy.” So, you’ll find miso used in dishes that aren’t otherwise Asian-inspired, truffle oil mixed with poblanos in a vinaigrette, and shrimp cooked with sambal paste for a mango gazpacho. The book offers a fun approach to cooking in that it’s suggested to be used as a guide rather than strictly followed. She encourages you to think about what each ingredient brings to a dish so that if you want to make substitutions, you can choose something else that will work similarly. I’ve marked several pages of recipes I plan to try. Those include the crispy chickpea fritters with salsa verde, seared duck breasts a l’orange with braised duck spring rolls, roasted radishes with blue cheese peanuts and cilantro, and the miso-marcona almond butter for sauteed scallops. Last weekend, I wanted a salad with zippy flavor to wake up one more meal of leftover turkey, and the shaved fennel and bok choy salad with ginger vinaigrette fit the bill.

Although it’s called a salad, the thick dressing is intended to coat the vegetables like a slaw. The vinaigrette is an emulsion with Dijon mustard and an egg yolk, but the flavor is all about the ginger. An entire half cup of minced fresh ginger is used, and don’t be afraid. It mixes into the vinaigrette nicely, and once it’s incorporated with the fennel and bok choy, the flavor is perfect. The salad also has basil and cilantro, and delightfully, I actually have both of those herbs in my garden in the fall. My basil is on its last legs, but I had plenty for this use. Thinly sliced bok choy and fennel shaved on a Benriner were tossed with chopped cilantro and a chiffonade of basil. The dressing was made in a blender with minced ginger, shallot, Dijon mustard, white balsamic vinegar, an egg yolk, soy sauce, maple syrup, and grapeseed oil. Of course you can add whatever amount of dressing you prefer, but a generous coating was lovely here.

There’s freshness from the fennel, ginger, and herbs, but this is no deprivation salad. The dressing’s richness prevents that. Next time, I might turn this into a meal in itself by adding some crunchy cashews on top. Radishes might be nice too for added color. This book already has me thinking creatively about how to use it, and I can’t wait to spend more time with it.

Shaved Fennel and Bok Choy Salad with Ginger Vinaigrette
re-printed with publisher's permission from Girl in the Kitchen

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Serves 8

Ginger Vinaigrette:
1/2 cup minced peeled fresh ginger (about 3 ounces)
1/2 cup minced shallot
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
1 egg yolk
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon maple syrup
1 cup grapeseed (half vegetable, half olive oil)
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Salad:
1 fennel bulb
2 heads bok choy
2 tablespoons chiffonade of fresh basil
2 tablespoons roughly chopped fresh cilantro
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper

1. To make the vinaigrette: In a blender, combine the ginger, shallot, mustard, vinegar, yolk, soy sauce, and syrup. On low speed, slowly drizzle in the oil until the dressing is smooth and thickened. Season with salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate until needed.
2. To make the salad: Remove the stalks from the fennel, cut the bulb in half, and shave it thinly on a mandoline, shaving around the core.
3. Cut off the bottom couple inches at the base of the bok choy and discard. Be sure to wash off any dirt and fully dry the leaves. Pile a few leaves on top of each other at a time and cut them crosswise very thinly.
4. Put the fennel and bok choy in a salad bowl with the basil and cilantro and toss with the dressing. Add as much as you like; I prefer this salad to be heavily dressed, like a slaw. Season with salt and pepper.

Drink Tip: Wit beer is pronounced just like wheat beer, and technically it is the same, but these Belgian-style wheats have less of the clove and banana notes you’d get out of German hefeweizens and more clean citrus notes that line up perfectly with fennel and ginger.

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Stir Fried Bok Choy with Shrimp, Noodles, and Oyster Sauce

Last week in our CSA bushel, we received a big, leafy, gorgeous head of bok choy. In the past, my favorite things to do with bok choy were to use it in a brothy soup with thin rice noodles or to simply saute it with some sesame oil. Nothing has changed regarding how great that soup and sauteed bok choy are, but I just wanted to do something different with it this time. I started pulling books off the shelves, and found two very similar ideas in two different books and both used full-sized bok choy, which is what I had, rather than the baby variety which seems to be more common in a lot of recipes. I mixed and matched and the result was what you see here. First, I found a pan-fried noodle dish made with bok choy and pork in Harumi's Japanese Cooking. In the recipe, she suggests other meats can be substituted for pork, so that got me thinking. The other key to her dish was the noodles that were added to the sauce. The second idea came from Eating Local, and that one involved stir fried shrimp and bok choy with added sliced red chiles. The sauces from both recipes were almost the exactly same, so I set about stir frying shrimp, of course I added the red chiles from the Eating Local recipe, I took the noodles from Harumi's dish, and dinner was served.

Since this was the big kind of bok choy, it was necessary to cut the leaves from the stems, roughly chop the leaves, and slice the thick stems. The red chiles were thinly sliced as was a clove of garlic, and a couple of slices of peeled ginger were smashed with the side of a knife. With everything prepped, the noodles went into boiling water while the shrimp were stir fried first. After a couple of minutes in the wok, the shrimp were removed to a large bowl, and the garlic, ginger, and chiles were tossed in the wok before the bok choy stems were added. The stir frying goes quickly, but to be sure the stems become tender before browning, a little water may need to be added to the wok. It was needed in my case, and about two minutes later, the stems were good to go. The bok choy leaves were added last, really just to wilt, and the shrimp were re-warmed and stirred into the mix. I removed all of that to a bowl that was kept warm next to the stove so that I could add the cooked and drained noodles to the wok. The noodles were stir fried with a little oil, and then topped with the sauce. The sauce was a mixture of oyster sauce, soy sauce, cornstarch, sesame oil, and rice wine. Last, I tossed the noodles with the shrimp and bok choy mixture.

There's something about stir frying that almost always causes me to have a minor freak out at some point. I either think things are cooking too quickly, or I realize I forgot to chop something, or everything just sticks to the wok. Amazingly, nothing went horribly wrong this time. This dish would have been great with just about any kind of greens, but the bok choy leaves and stems gave it nice contrasting textures. The sauce was delicious, the chiles gave it spice, and next time I have bok choy on hand I'll have one more meal in mind for it.

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