Salad with White Anchovies

I’ve been seeing these white anchovies on a lot of restaurant menus recently and I’m kind of obsessed with them. They’re very different from the grey pungent kind that come in a jar (although I am a huge fan of those, too, in Caesar salads or pastas). These are about 5 inches long, and meatier and fresh-tasting. I found some last weekend in an Italian market and I was thrilled. I was thinking these were one of those things only restaurants and people who lived in Manhattan or Italy could get. They were probably overpriced but a lot cheaper than a restaurant. I like to rationalize expensive ingredients or bottles of wine by comparing to the 300% markup that a restaurant would charge, kind of like buying clothes on sale.

So I had them on a salad based on a recipe I found from Bon Appetit with fennel and red onion. The fennel is a great choice with the anchovies. It compliments most seafood, but I’m not sure I would have come up with this pairing on my own. I’ve been eating fennel a lot this winter- as part of the mire poix of a soup , or cut into wedges and roasted, but I haven’t had it raw in a while. The thing about fennel is if you’re going to eat it raw, it needs to be sliced really thin (I think that applies to onion was well).

First I sliced the onion really thin. Like, as thin as I could get it. I tossed that with 1 Tbs each of red wine and sherry vinegar (mainly because I couldn’t decide which to use). I pretty much always do this with onions when they’re going to be eaten raw; I think it takes the edge off and seems to prevent that raw-onion-mouth thing you get after eating them. I left the onions to pickle in the vinegars while I watched the first half of Glee and opened wine.

I mixed the onion-vinegar mixture with 2 Tbs of olive oil and salt and pepper, and added the fennel to that, and then tossed it all with 5 oz (the whole box) of arugula. I laid the anchovies on top and gave it another few grinds of black pepper, most for aesthetic reasons. Black pepper on white fish just looks good.

This would probably be salad for two normal people, but I ate both. One serving (half the recipe) is about 220-250 calories. The picture is from Bon Appetit, mine had a lot more arugula but just as pretty!

½ package of white anchovies, drained on paper towels

½ red onion, sliced paper-thin

1 small fennel bulb, halved, cored, and sliced thin (but not as thin as the onion)

2 Tbs vinegar (red wine, sherry... I wouldn’t do balsamic though)

2 Tbs good olive oil

Salt and pepper