I haven’t posted many recipes on the blog, mainly because I didn’t think anyone would give a crap what I was cooking at home. But I want to share two recent recipe discoveries. Both are simple to prepare, both make soul-satisfying cold weather meals, and interestingly, both contain fennel.
I’ve only started cooking with fennel recently because I’ve never known how to use it. I also mistakenly believed it would give a dish an overpowering licorice flavor, when actually, cooked fennel is mellow, subtle and almost sweet; I’m not even sure I’d be able to identify it if I didn’t know it was in the recipe. But both these dishes have big flavor, and I think fennel is one of the secrets to their success.
The first dish is a Quick and Easy Cioppino from Gourmet Magazine. Really, really simple to make — you can easily throw it together after work — and totally impressive to other people, who’ll think you slaved over it for hours. I didn’t take a pic of the finished product since I hadn’t planned on writing about it. But trust me — serve it with crusty bread, wine and a nice salad, and you’ve got a dish that’ll wow friends and family (they don’t need to know it only takes 40 minutes start to finish).
The second dish is a Cannellini Bean and Sausage Gratin. I did take a pic of this one — er, after I’d already started digging in.
A bit more prep time due to the chopping, but still a snap to make. And it’s healthy. Swiss chard is one of those nutritional dynamo vegetables, and I substituted turkey sausage for real sausage. Also used white kidney beans instead of cannellini — really, any white bean would work fine.
The result? Mmmmmmm. The beans got lusciously creamy, the breadcrumbs with fresh parmesan crisped up just right, and the sage, fennel, sausage and swiss chard gave the whole dish multiple layers of flavor.
Make this dish, and you won’t care that the days are short and temperatures are dipping. ”Bring on the cold!” you’ll say. ”I’ve got my bean and sausage gratin!”
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Tags: recipes