Shaved Cucumber and Fennel Salad with Olives and Feta

Shaving raw vegetables, either on a mandoline or with a very sharp knife, is an easy way to quickly transform them into a featherlike, elegant salad. The method works just as well with fibrous vegetables, like fennel, as it does with juicier ones, like cucumbers. You could also shave radishes, yellow beets, cauliflower, zucchini, asparagus, apple, or celery into the mix.

But as with any raw vegetable salad, assertive dressings and add-ins will ensure no one thinks you’re serving them just a pile of chicken scraps. You’re looking for an acidic dressing to penetrate and coat the sturdy raw vegetables — here, that simply means some lemon zest and juice. For mix-ins, you’ll make a Mediterranean-inspired salsa of olives, feta, and a few chopped fennel fronds. By layering the salsa with the lemony fennel and cucumbers, each forkful is studded with a bit of everything: bright, fresh, salty, rich, briny, crunchy.