A visually stunning tribute to the winter season, this salad combines colorful citrus with the pungent, green flavor of just-pressed olive oil, and the briny note of cured olives. With little prep time, this flavorful salad can be made using good 'Olio Nuovo' olive oil and your Alice's Mortar and Pestle.
Ingredients:
3-4 Mixed Citrus (Grapefruit, Navel Orange, Blood Orange, Cara Cara, etc.)
1 Meyer Lemon (zest and juice)
'Olio Nuovo' Olive Oil
10 Castelvetrano or other mild green olive
3 Kumquats
Sea Salt
Parsley
Instructions:
To make the lemony vinaigrette, use Alice's Mortar and Pestle to pound a clove of garlic with a big pinch of sea salt until it is a translucent paste in the bowl. Using a microplane zester, zest the rind of a whole organic Meyer lemon into the mortar and cover with all the juice from the lemon. Tip: If you can't find Meyer lemons, use the zest and juice of half an orange and half a lemon.
Allow the lemon juice and pounded garlic mixture to sit for fifteen minutes so that the acid mellows the spicy bite of the raw garlic. Pit the olives and add them to the mortar, pestling gently.
While the garlic and lemon are macerating, supreme your citrus. Slice off the top and bottom off each citrus. To find the top, look for the side with the little “belly button," and simply slice that off in a straight line, repeating on the bottom. Using the middle of the blade, gently slice down the side of the citrus to remove the rind and pith. Rotate the citrus and slice down the side again. Make sure you line up your slices so you remove all of the rind and pith. Continue until all of the rind is removed. You want to take away all of the rind and pith but very little of the fruit. Supreme your citrus to make perfect rounds.
Whisk a couple glugs of Singer Baker Lane Estate's 'Olio Nuovo' olive oil into your lemon juice olive mixture. You want about twice as much oil as acid—taste as you go along, correcting with more oil or salt. It should taste bright but balanced.
Arrange your citrus rounds beautifully on a plate and spoon the dressing over top (starting with half the vinaigrette, and adding more only if you need it). Scatter with parsley leaves and slivered kumquats and serve immediately!
