I made this simple salad of blood oranges, green olives and olive oil for a snack the other day and it was so beautiful that I couldn’t help but take photos of it.
This dish is so simple that at first I wasn’t planning on sharing the recipe here, but I absolutely love this photo and the taste of this Sicilian blood orange salad was spectacular. So even though there isn’t much to it, I decided this is definitely a recipe worth blogging about.
Within a week of arriving on the island, I had written down my first Sicilian recipe. We were on a tour bus heading through the countryside towards some destination that completely escapes me now and our tour guide was giving us information about the orange groves that we were driving past.
He mentioned that if anyone wanted to pull him aside later, he would share a recipe for a Sicilian blood orange salad. Of course I grabbed him the first chance I got and scribbled down the recipe on my little yellow notepad.
It was a very simple orange salad. The ingredients were only sliced oranges, fresh garlic, fresh parsley, and olive oil. To be honest, I thought it was one of the strangest recipes I had ever seen.
I grew up in California eating fresh oranges every winter but I had never heard of anyone eating an orange with garlic and olive oil. In fact, we never really did anything with oranges other than peel them by hand and eat them or make fresh-squeezed orange juice.
But I was completely fascinated by the recipe and the first time I tried oranges paired with olive oil, I was hooked.
Well now I am constantly trying new salads that involve oranges and olive oil and if you’ve been browsing through any other food blogs lately, you might have noticed that lots of other people are exploring this combination as well.
If you want something a little more complex than I am giving you today, there are tons of citrus salads floating around the blogosphere right now. And a favorite orange and fennel salad that I tried recently can be found at Food Blogga.
If you are new to eating oranges this way, this recipe is a simple and beautiful way to start.
Ingredients
Blood oranges, one per person
Green olives, handful per person (preferably oil cured)
extra virgin olive oil
coarse salt
Instructions
1. Peel and section oranges with a sharp knife, leaving the pith and membrane behind.
2. Arrange orange slices on a plate, drizzle with olive oil, then add a sprinkling of coarse salt.
3. Scatter some green olives over the plate and serve.
Here are instructions for peeling and segmenting an orange with a knife.
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