A beautifully light, fragrant dish with creamy Irish goat’s cheese dressed in a rice wine vinaigrette. This will please all your guests, vegetarian or not.
Ingredients
- 4 blood oranges
- 1/2 fennel bulb
- 6 cherry tomatoes
- 100g soft cheese, broken into small pieces. Goat’s cheese or a blue cheese both work equally well. I use St. Tola goat’s cheese or Cashel blue cows or Crozier blue sheep’s cheese
- 75ml rice wine vinegar
- 40g castor sugar
- 2 star anise
- 1 cinnamon stick broken in two
- 10g fresh root ginger, peeled and cut into thin strips
Method
1. Mix all the marinade ingredients together in a shallow bowl.
2. Peel the oranges and remove any pith attached.
3. Slice the oranges horizontally making whole circles. You can try for 4/5 for each orange.
4. Place the orange circles in the marinade for a half hour.
5. Prepare the fennel bulb. Trim the hard hollow stalks about an inch above the bulb. Save the feathery fronds for the garnish. To slice the fennel bulb, slice ½ inch off the root end. Stand the bulb on the root end and cut vertically into thin slices.
6. Place the sliced fennel onto a serving plate or individual plates as you wish.
7. Drain the orange slices from the marinade, saving the liquid.
8. Place the orange slices on top of the sliced fennel.
9. Add the chopped tomatoes and cheese.
10. Spoon 2/3 of the marinade over the ingredients (you can save the remainder in a jar for dressing a salad another day).
11. Decorate with the fennel fronds.
