INGREDIENTS: (Serves two)

Salad greens for two
Salt
Black pepper
2 tablespoons (30ml) heavy cream
2 teaspoons (10ml) red-wine vinegar

PROCEDURE:

1. Rinse and dry salad greens of your choice and, if necessary, cut or tear them into bite-size pieces. I think this creamy dressing works best with firm lettuce like romaine or even iceberg lettuce; if you choose fragile greens like field lettuces or mesclun, dress at the last moment before serving.

2. Put the cream in your salad bowl and season it with salt and black pepper to taste. Stir briskly with a fork or small whisk. You don't want to whip the cream, only to work in enough air to make it frothy. Stir in the vinegar until it's incorporated. You'll end up with a creamy, sweet and just gently tangy blend, somewhat like a buttermilk dressing but not as sour. (Feel free to experiment with proportions; I used a little less vinegar on my first effort and a little more on the second, and felt that the 3-to-1 cream-to-vinegar ratio recommended here gave the best result.) Put in the salad greens, toss and serve.

Fennel slaw

INGREDIENTS: (Serves two)

Medium-size fennel bulb
Sweet red onion, enough to make 1/2 cup shredded
1 cucumber
2 tablespoons peanut oil
1 tablespoon lime juice
1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
Dash hot sauce
Salt
Black pepper

PROCEDURE:

1. Fennel used to be difficult to find, but it's increasingly available at better grocers and produce markets. It may be sold as "anise" or "finocchio," but under any name you're looking for a crisp, pale greenish-white, gently licorice-scented bulb about the size of a baseball, with pale green, feathery fronds. Trim off any brownish bits and the tough root end and remove the green fronds; for this salad you want only the whitish bulb. Using a sharp chef's knife or even a mandoline, cut the bulb into slices as paper-thin as you can get them. An average-size bulb should yield about two to three cups.

2. Slice the red onion paper-thin and mix it gently with the sliced fennel in a large bowl. Peel the cucumber, cut it in half lengthwise, and scoop out and discard the seeds. Slice paper-thin and add to the fennel and onion mix.

3. Make a light vinaigrette by whisking the peanut oil, lime juice, soy sauce and hot sauce into an emulsion (I like to use a strongly flavored roasted-peanut oil with plenty of peanut flavor). Stir into the vegetables, add salt and pepper to taste, and refrigerate for 30 minutes to an hour or so to give the flavors time to blend. Check seasonings and serve.

MATCHING WINE: Although the conventional wisdom advises against serving wine with salads because vinegar and acids "war" with wine, both of these dishes were designed with wine in mind. If you make them as dinner salads, consider the topping in making your wine choice, selecting a rich white if you add shrimp to the slaw, for instance, or perhaps a fruity red with a grilled-chicken or cheese variation on Pepin's creamy blend. For what it's worth, when I built the fennel salad as a side dish with blue-cheese-laced lamb burgers, I picked a hearty red Rhone - Domaine Réméjeanne 2003 Chevrefeuilles Côtes du Rhône - to match the burgers, but it also fared surprisingly well with the aromatic fennel.