Dinner Tonight: Orange and Red Onion Salad
With the temperatures spilling over the 90 degree threshold, and the fiancee threatening violence if I turn on the oven in our apartment, I was on a search for fresh food that didn’t require any heat at all to prepare. I found this recipe in Lidia’s Italy, and it sounded perfect. The only ingredient I couldn’t find were blood oranges, but Lidia said smaller oranges would work fine and for the most part, they did. The flavors were all there. The sweetness of the orange was cut by the bite of the thin red onion, and the olive oil gave the dish a savory edge.
Still I was a little confused by the center of each round, which contained various amounts of inedible white parts. Perhaps I was supposed to remove those too. They weren’t much of a problem in the middle of the orange, but towards the top, those white parts became inedible. Either way, as long as you don’t mind pulling things out of your teeth, you couldn't ask for a nicer summertime salad.
About the author: Nick Kindelsperger is a co-founder of The Paupered Chef, a blog dedicated to saving time and money while enjoying food in every way possible. He sells wine for a living and lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Orange and Red Onion Salad
- serves 4 -
Ingredients
4 oranges (preferably blood orange, but regular ones are fine)
1/4 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1/4 teaspoon salt
Black pepper
1 tablespoon olive oil
Procedure
1. Remove the peel of the oranges, along with as much of the pith as possible. Thinly slice the oranges into rounds, about 1/3 of inch thick. Place them on a plate.
2. Place the thinly sliced red onion on top.
3. Sprinkle the salt on top, dress with olive oil, and crack some pepper to taste.
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6 Comments:
Ew.
Southerngirl at 5:00PM on 08/04/08
i think this would taste good but it's a little weird that there's little else to it. maybe it had some spinach as well?
gobbl at 5:30PM on 08/04/08
I've made something similar, and it's really tasty - even better with some goat cheese crumbled on top.
piccola at 8:43PM on 08/04/08
It does seem to be missing *something* to tie it together. I can't see eating a bowl of oranges and onions with nothing but salt, pepper and oil. To each their own I guess, but I would want a base of greens, or some herbs, or at the very least chop everything smaller and add a dressing incorporating that oil with some orange juice and some other flavor.
Goat cheese sounds like a tasty addition!
sadiepix at 9:01PM on 08/04/08
I like this salad with some finely sliced fennel and black olives.
zedvaint at 5:42AM on 08/05/08
There is a recipe for this salad in one of the Silver Palate cookbooks (I think the first one, though I'm not positive). Their recipe calls for marinating the very thinly sliced onion in a vinaigrette, before composing the salad. This takes a lot of the bite out of the onion. It also calls for herbs (fresh or dried), which add a lot to the flavor of the salad. It sounds strange, but it's delicious...though not really meant to be eaten as entree.
Junie at 8:39AM on 08/05/08