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Monday, 07 November 2011 |
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slow-roasted fennel
from cooking in everyday english, by Todd English
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This involves four ingredients (plus salt and pepper) and patience — it is slow after all — which is kind of funny, because according to Amanda Haas, who worked on the book, she and Todd knocked out all the recipes in three intense days of cooking together in New York (get the full story here). As a result, every dish has fewer than 10 ingredients and is easy to make. "No restaurant food!" was Amanda's mantra. A chef's book with no chef-y stuff? Love it.
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serves 6
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prep time: 10 minutes |
roast time: 6 hours
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3 fennel bulbs
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1 lemon, halved
about 1/2 cup shaved or grated parmesan, preferably Parmigiano-Reggiano
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Preheat oven to 250°. Rinse fennel, trim bottoms and cut off stalks, reserving fronds for another use if desired. [my note: Sorry, but the stalks really are of no use other than flavoring stock for fennel risotto—I've tried cooking them to see if they were edible but they were tough as shoelaces.] Place trimmed bulbs on a 15x12-inch piece of foil; drizzle with the olive oil and sprinkle with the salt and pepper. Wrap foil tightly around fennel. Bake for 6 hours or until tender enough that you can pierce a bulb straight through easily with a knife. Remove from oven and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes, then unwrap.
Cut fennel into wedges and place in a bowl. Squeeze lemon halves over fennel, sprinkle with parmesan and serve.
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note: I have only one oven and I wanted to cook pan-roasted lemon chicken to serve with this, so I put the chicken in the oven with the fennel after 2 hours and increased the heat to 300°. They cooked in there together for 2 hours, then I removed and unwrapped the fennel. It was pretty tender. So I cut each bulb in half, put them on another baking sheet, drizzled more olive oil over them and caramelized them in the hot oven (400°) for about 25 minutes while the chicken did its final roasting. I served the fennel and chicken with Wild Mushroom Couscous from Todd's book. What an amazing menu for a cold Sunday night.
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