Drinks advice

Fennel salad with Klarenaer Graangenever

On the platter is paper-thin shaved fennel with cucumber, radish and lemon wedges, dressed with horseradish and olive oil, and over it coarsely flaked smoked trout. Opposite stands a young graangenever made from six kinds of malt wine and grain distillate, distilled with juniper berries and botanicals, which follows the smoke of the trout without pushing it aside.

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Fennel salad
Photo: megan.chromik, CC BY-SA 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Klarenaer Graangenever is a young grain genever of 35% ABV in a 70 cl bottle. It is made from six different kinds of malt wine and grain distillates and distilled with juniper berries and various herbs; the description gives no exact malt wine share and we therefore do not state one. The bottle comes from the Netherlands. For the designation graanjenever the law requires that all alcohol comes from grain and is at least 30% ABV; as a young jenever it further requires at least 35% ABV and in practice at most 15% malt wine.

Klarenaer Graangenever

The combination

Why this works together

This salad is built from nothing but sharpness and water: fennel with aniseed, radish with pepper, cucumber with moisture, lemon with acidity and horseradish with a burning top note. The smoked trout is the only rich, salty element and risks disappearing beneath it all. An old jenever or korenwijn, with its malt wine, would flatten the whole salad and leave only the trout. This graanjenever, with its six malt wines and botanicals, has just enough body to hold the smoke of the trout, yet stays dry enough to let the fennel and radish come through. The juniper and the botanicals echo the aniseed character of fennel and dill, and the horseradish meets its match in the alcohol. That way the glass keeps both sides of the plate together instead of choosing one.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 20 minutes
  • Type starter

What you need

  • 2 fennel bulbs
  • 1 cucumber
  • 100 g radishes
  • 1 organic lemon
  • 15 g fresh dill
  • 15 g fresh chives
  • 1 tablespoon horseradish from a jar
  • 4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • 250 g smoked trout fillet
  • a mandoline

How to make it

  1. Halve the fennel bulbs, remove the hard core and slice the fennel paper-thin, preferably with a mandoline.
  2. Halve the cucumber lengthways, scrape out the seeds and cut it into thin slices. Cut the radishes into thin slices.
  3. Scrub the lemon clean and grate off the yellow zest. Cut off the top and bottom, stand the lemon upright and cut the peel away from top to bottom. Cut the segments from between the membranes and chop them coarsely.
  4. Finely chop the dill and the chives. Mix the horseradish with the olive oil and season with pepper.
  5. Arrange the fennel, cucumber, radish, dill, chives, lemon wedges and grated horseradish on a platter and fold the dressing through.
  6. Break the smoked trout into pieces and spread them over the salad.

In the glass

Serving

Serve the Klarenaer chilled from the fridge in a small tulip glass, filled to the rim. At about 8 °C the herbs and the malt wine remain noticeable, while the genever is still cold enough to stand next to a cold salad. Ice-cold from the freezer you close up the herbs exactly where you need them here. So take the bottle out of the fridge a quarter of an hour before serving.

Everything about Klarenaer GraangeneverBack to Drinks advice from ’t Bockje

Wij verkopen geen alcohol aan personen onder de 18 jaar. NIX18