Side · 10 minutes · Serves 4
Cucumber, fennel and capers with Bright Pepper
Fennel and cucumber are both mostly crunch and water, and on their own neither tastes of very much. Shave the fennel as thin as you can and lay it over the cucumber, and they become something together: anise from one, cool from the other, and nothing heavy anywhere on the plate.
What the plate needs is salt and something sharp. The capers bring the salt, in brine. Bright Pepper brings the sharpness: lemon zest and orange peel, black and white pepper, a little mint at the back. That is most of what a dressing would have done, so the dressing here is just good oil.
Bright Pepper is also the only blend in the range with no nightshades in it, and nothing else on this plate has any either, which makes it the salad to reach for if peppers, tomatoes and chillies are off the table as well.
- Serves
- 4 as a side
- Time
- 10 minutes
Ingredients
- 1 large fennel bulb, fronds kept if it has them
- 1 cucumber
- 1 tbsp capers, drained, or rinsed if salted
- 1½ tsp Bright Pepper
- 3 tbsp good olive oil
- A squeeze of lemon, if you like it sharper
- Flake salt, only if it needs it
Method
- Slice the cucumber into thin rounds and lay them over a wide plate in one overlapping layer.
- Trim the fennel, halve it through the root and shave it as thinly as you can, on a mandoline if you have one and with your sharpest knife if you do not. Thin is the whole point: thick fennel is chewy, shaved fennel is crisp.
- Pile the fennel loosely over the cucumber, leaving a ring of green showing at the edge.
- Scatter over the capers, then the Bright Pepper, then pour the oil over in a thin stream so it reaches everything. Tear any fennel fronds over the top.
- Taste a piece before you reach for the salt, because the capers and the blend have brought plenty. Add the lemon if you want it sharper, and eat within the hour, while the fennel still snaps.