This simple and inexpensive salad has become all the rage in Italian or Italianesque restaurants where it is sold at a huge markup. To make this salad, it helps to be equipped with a Benriner vegetable slicer. If you don’t have a vegetable slicer, you can make this salad with a very sharp knife. Be sure to use your best olive oil.

Ingredients

• 1 large or 2 small bulbs fennel

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

• Salt

• Pepper

• Small chunk Parmigiano-Reggiano (optional)

Directions
1 Cut the green fronds off the fennel. (These can be saved in the freezer; they’re great in broths. Or you can dry them and use them as a seasoning for grilled fish.) Cut the fennel bulb in half from top to bottom and use a small knife to cut out the core from each half. Slice the fennel as thinly as you can with a vegetable slicer or sharp knife.

2 Just before serving, toss the fennel with the oil and season with salt and pepper. (Don’t do this in advance, or the salt will make the salad limp.) Arrange on individual plates. Use a cheese slicer or vegetable peeler to shave off several thin slices of Parmesan for each plate and arrange them on top.

Makes 4 first-course servings.

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Excerpted from Kitchen Simple by James Peterson Copyright © 2011 by James Peterson. Excerpted by permission of Ten Speed Press, a division of Random House of Canada Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.