Composed salad with fennel, beets, and prawns

B and I just got back from two weeks in Spain, so expect a post and slideshow soon. In the meantime, there were a few meals from before we left that must be posted.

For this composed salad, we cooked the beets the way we've learned to from the Alice Waters books: wash the beets well but do not peel them, and wrap them tightly while still wet in foil; place in a hot oven (whatever temperature you need for the rest of your baking that day) and bake for at least an hour, and better an hour and a half; transfer the hot beets to a bath of ice water, and the skins should easily slough off; cut the beets and place in a bowl with some salt and vinegar (no oil!) to marinate for at least half an hour. We boiled fennel greens to make a thin broth, and poached the peeled fennel hearts. We hard-boiled eggs, and also butterflied and briefly boiled prawns. To complete the salad, we dressed lettuce in a garlic vinaigrette, and garnished everything with some capers, kalamata olives, anchovy fillets, and sprigs of fennel. We served the salad with fresh home-made whole-wheat baguette, parsley butter (lots of parsley, some butter, some garlic, some salt, some lemon juice, processed in the cuisinart), and a French rosé.