Spring Salad with Creamy Lemon Fennel Dressing

Visit the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market this Sunday from 10 am - 2 pm at the corner of Agate and 19th Ave for a wide selection of fresh produce from Camas Swale Farm and pastured meat and poultry from Fair Valley Farm and Fog Hollow Farm. 

Camas Swale has a eye popping selection of crunchy spring vegetables -- cucumbers, snap peas, fennel bulb, and turnips -- to layer on a bed of their purple tipped butterhead lettuce. For salad dressing, I usually make a miso vinaigrette, sometimes with tahini for more creaminess. But for an extra decadent treat I decided to whip up a creamy lemon and fennel frond dressing based on this recipe.

This creamy salad was the perfect accompaniment to Turkish stuffed flatbreads called pide, made with Fair Valley Farm ground lamb. And once people started drizzling the dressing on their plates, they found it also went well with roasted cauliflower, garlic scapes, and chickpeas, or just eaten with a spoon.

Creamy Lemon Fennel Dressing

adapted from CreamTea's food52 recipe

1 lemon
2 tablespoons crème fraîche or sour cream
Fine sea salt to taste
1/2 teaspoon mild honey
1-2 tablespoons minced fennel fronds
5 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Grate the lemon with a zester and set zest aside. Halve lemon and juice one of the halves.

Whisk crème fraîche or sour cream, lemon juice, zest, salt, and honey together until smooth.

While whisking, add olive oil in a thin stream until blended.

Add fennel fronds and whisk again to incorporate. Taste and adjust seasoning (salt, lemon juice, honey) as needed.

Serve the dressing over a salad of crunchy spring vegetables and butterhead lettuce.

Tahini and Miso Dressing

Salad dressing has been a contentious topic in our household for many years. My daughter seemed to have been born with hypersensitive sour receptors, rejecting anything with vinegar, whereas my son tended toward flighty fickleness with most flavors. But somehow, while tinkering with a dressing inspired by this recipe, I've hit upon our family's secret sauce: a dressing with just the right balance of creamy (tahini), salty (miso), sweet (honey), and sour (sherry vinegar). It seems to go with everything (above, red lettuce with pears; below, bell peppers with baby bok choy). Best of all, both kids love it so much that they sneak spoonfuls of it straight. I'm happy to turn a blind eye to stealthy salad eating.

Tahini and Miso Dressing

enough for one salad for four

1 tsp tahini
1 tsp white miso
1/4 tsp honey
1 Tbsp sherry vinegar
3 Tbsp olive oil

Combine all of the ingredients into a well-mixed dressing. Taste and adjust flavors with additional tahini, miso, honey, vinegar, or oil to your preference.