Fennel, Radish, Orange and Crab Salad | “My Paris Kitchen”

Fennel, radish, orange and crab salad is not your everyday salad. Chances are you can’t get all the ingredients in one place. Here’s my shopping expedition. I have to go to Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and the farmer markets just to source the vegetables. Normally I would not have taken such a deep dive into this exotic salad. Yet, we’re fortunate enough to be gifted with the best crabmeat. More on that later. With fresh crab meat, making a salad like this sounds so right!

Fresh crab meat is not only expensive, they are hard to find around here in New York. However, blue crabs from the Chesapeake Bay are available a few hours away in the summer. I learned how to sail in the Bay in my younger days. In the evening, we’d hammer away delectable blue crabs in the seafood shacks by the docks. By and large, sailing and eating buckets of crabs was a summer pastime that had gone by the wayside as family life takes hold. Where did time go?

We toured J.M. Clayton Company in Cambridge, Maryland, founded in 1890 and the oldest working crab processing plant in the world. We spent some time with Bill, one of the owners. During the peak summer months, they employ about 90 people, mostly migrant workers, to pick crab meat. Most noteworthy is the delicate work done by skilled human hands; robots may have a hard time learning and keeping up with the manual operations. Nonetheless, challenges remain — in the areas of sustainability of a healthy habitat in the Bay and a sound migrant policy.

With a connection to Bill’s family, we’re able to get our hands on a good supply of both the fresh and pasteurized crab meat. There is nothing like having the best seasonal produce which instantly brings a delicate crab salad to life. Needless to say, we savor every bite of the delicious and bountiful blue crabs. They goes so well together with the bitter greens, the licorice flavor of the fennel and the sweetness of blood oranges. Heavenly!

Print Recipe

Fennel, Radish, Orange and Crab Salad

Serves: 4

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
• 4 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• ¾ teaspoon sea salt or kosher salt
• 6 tablespoons (90ml) mild-tasting olive oil
• 8 ounces (230g) lump crabmeat
• 1 cup (10g) fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
• Freshly ground black pepper
• 1 fennel bulb
• 2 navel or blood oranges
• 6 cups (230g) torn or sliced radicchio or Belgian endive, or picked watercress sprigs
• 10 radishes (100g), thinly sliced
• Flaky sea salt, to finish

Instructions

1

Mix together the vinegar, lemon juice, and salt in a bowl. Stir in the olive oil until well combined. Toss the crabmeat and parsley in the dressing, season with a few generous grinds of the peppermill, and set aside.  

2

Trim the fronds off the fennel bulb and remove any tough outer layers. Cut the fennel bulb in half lengthwise and cut out the core. Slice the fennel as thinly as you possibly can, or shave it with a mandoline.  

3

Cut the stem and opposite ends off the oranges. Place each orange, cut-side down, on a cutting board. With a sharp paring or serrated knife, cut away the peel, using downward motions that match the curvature of the fruit. Slice out suprêmes (sections) of the oranges, leaving the membranes behind.  

4

Arrange the salad leaves on four large plates (or a large serving platter). Scatter the shaved fennel over the salad leaves and tuck the orange segments and radishes in between the fennel and the salad leaves.  

5

Distribute the crabmeat and parsley over the salads, spoon the remaining dressing over the tops, sprinkle with flaky sea salt, and serve.

Notes

Adapted from David Lebovitz's My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories