A fennel-apple salad is among the delectable recipes highlighted in Samin Nosrat’s latest cookbook.
A lot has happened in the eight years since Samin Nosrat released her James Beard Award–winning cookbook, Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Celebrated in the same breath as Joy of Cooking and How to Cook Everything, the bestseller spurred a hit Netflix documentary series and made the veteran East Bay chef and teacher a household name. Through it all, Nosrat remained focused on what made Salt a relatable success: cooking delicious and relatively simple meals for family and friends out of her Oakland home. Set for release on September 16, her follow-up, Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love, is packed with more than 125 recipes meant to be enjoyed with others, from a comforting tomato soup to crowd-pleasing fluffy pork meatballs. Good Things also offers tips for the harried home chef. Nosrat includes three ways to employ each of her favorite dressings with tweaks that can be matched to different situations and seasons. Her lemon-miso dressing, which she describes as “tangy and sweet, creamy and rounded out with umami,” can be mixed into a spring chopped salad or, in winter, drizzled on dark-roasted broccoli and cauliflower. For early fall, she recommends using a poppy seed variation tossed with thinly shaved fennel and apple, toasted pecans, and aged Gouda. “Add some poppy seeds for that classic flavor, or leave them out to make the dressing more versatile for drizzling over roasted vegetables, in potato salad, or anywhere else you can imagine,” she advises.
Samin Nosrat’s Shaved Fennel and Apple Salad with Lemon-Miso Dressing
The award-winning East Bay chef shares a recipe from her forthcoming cookbook Good Things: Recipes and Rituals to Share with People You Love.
Shaved Fennel and Apple Salad
Ingredients
- 1 fennel bulb
- 1 small crisp apple
- 1 celery stalk
- ¼ cup toasted pecans
- 1⁄3 cup aged Gouda
- freshly ground black pepper
- salt
Use a mandolin to thinly shave 1 fennel bulb (halved and cored), 1 small crisp apple (halved and cored), and 1 celery stalk into a salad bowl. Crumble in ¼ cup toasted pecans and 1⁄3 cup aged Gouda, crumbled into pea-size pieces. Toss with the poppyseed variation of the dressing and season with freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste. Serve immediately.
Lemon Miso
MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS
Ingredients
- ¼ cup aquafaba
- 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
- 4 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
- ¾ cup neutral oil
- ¼ cup sugar
- 2 packed teaspoons finely grated lemon zest
- ¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons white miso
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- ¼ teaspoon celery seeds
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons poppyseeds, lightly toasted (optional)
Directions
In a liquid measuring cup or wide-mouth jar, combine the aquafaba, mustard, and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar. With an immersion blender running on high speed, drizzle the oil in a thin stream to puree and emulsify and make aquafaba “mayonnaise.”
In another wide-mouth jar, blend together the remaining 3 tablespoons vinegar and the sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, miso, garlic, onion powder, celery seeds, and salt until smooth. Return the blender to the aquafaba mayonnaise and with the blender running at high speed, drizzle in the lemon miso mixture. Stir in the poppyseeds, if desired. Taste and adjust with salt, vinegar, and lemon juice as needed.
Cover and refrigerate remaining dressing for up to 1 week.
Excerpted from Good Things by Samin Nosrat. Copyright © 2025 by Samin Nosrat. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Photographs from Good Things by Aya Brackett. Copyright © 2025 by Aya Brackett.
