Cover to Cover Challenge: Fennel and Orange Salad with Lemon-Ginger Vinaigrette

I signed up for Mark Bittman's Cover to Cover challenge about a month ago. I feel like I've fallen into a bit of a rut with cooking, and thought having some one assign me a recipe would force me to do something I wouldn't ordinarily do. And I was right! I'm not much of a salad person -- I don't mind eating them, but I rarely make them -- so it's definitely something I've not done before. And it's from Frederik de Pue, who's restaurant Table is very buzzy right now.

I found all of the ingredients pretty easily, though I was unable to find fennel fronds. The preparation was simple enough, with the only difficult step being removing the membranes from the orange slices (I imagine this would be easier with practice). I thought the dressing was especially nice, and I'll probably steal that in the future.The salad didn't work very well in execution though. I worry that I may have used too many mustard greens, but I suspect even if I had been more rigorous in only using the amount called for, it would have still been problematic. They were just too tough! In addition, the raw fennel was more pungent than I care for. One tip that I think would help would be to dress the salad half an hour to an hour before dinner. We do that with kale salads, and it really helps soften up the leaves.

The bacon cauliflower pizza, however, was great.