Citrus and Celery Salad with Kalamata Olives

This Citrus and Celery Salad with Kalamata Olives combines so many unexpected flavors into one delicious dish.

For this citrus and celery salad, I used a combination of fresh navel oranges from a friend's tree, and fresh tangelos from our tangelo tree.

The combination of the citrus, celery, and olives, dressed with olive oil and red wine vinegar, is so unexpectedly refreshing. The salad is so easy to put together too. It's a wonderful combination of sweet, sour, salty, and crunchy.

The fresh picked citrus in this salad is super juicy. Combined with the olive oil and vinegar, the oranges and tangelos are so bright.

While citrus is the star of this salad, celery is the secret crispy ingredient. Celery is one of those ingredients that we take for granted. For me, it was always one of those vegetables that I ate when I was "on a diet." In fact, when I was in college, we used to speculate as to whether digesting celery consumed more calories than a serving of celery actually contained.

For cocktail lovers, one of my favorite celery recipes is this Gin and Celery Tonic.

One of my favorite ingredients in celery is the leaves. When I became a grown up, and it was my turn to make Thanksgiving dinner, I turned to my mom's recipe for stuffing. In her recipe, she emphasized that you must include the celery leaves.

Celery leaves also are great as a garnish for soups, stews, and other dishes that you might garnish with parsley.

The leaves are really flavorful. Did you know that you can dry them in a 275 degree F oven for 20 minutes, crumble them, and mix them with some coarse salt to make celery salt. How cool is that?

I loved this salad, especially with these juicy oranges and tangelos. I totally love the contrasting colors. If you have access to blood oranges, the presentation would be even more beautiful. Tangerines would be awesome too.

Yield: 2 servings

Citrus and Celery Salad with Kalamata Olives

ingredients:

• 2 navel oranges thinly slices, and rind removed
• 2 tangelos or tangerines, thinly sliced, and rind removed
• 1 large celery rib, finely chopped
• 6 pitted kalamata olives, chopped
• Drizzle of extra virgin olive oil
• Drizzle of red wine vinegar
• Salt and pepper to taste

instructions:

1. Place the oranges and tangelos in a shallow bowl. Add the celery and olives, and drizzle with the olive oil and vinegar. 
2. Place the bowl in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours to marinate. 
3. Sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. 

http://www.karenskitchenstories.com/2018/03/citrus-and-celery-salad-with-kalamata.html

This recipe is adapted from Kitchen Matrix: More than 700 Simple Recipes and Techniques to Mix and Match for Endless Possibilities. It's a collection of all of his Matrix themed columns from the New York Times. You can get the recipes on the NYT website, but this cookbook pulls them all together. Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla is cooking her way through the book, and she has invited her friends to cook along with her. Keep an eye on her blog every Tuesday for a new post about the book. Here are the participants' contributions this week.

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