This post has little to say to you if you are:
- Gluten-intolerant
- Carb-phobic
- Reticent about garlic
- Squeamish about chilli
- Vegetarian
- Weaning off deadly nightshades (Weirdos. I'd be very interested to know whether this blog has any readers who genuinely do follow a macrobiotic diet.
- Not sold on fennel
- purist about recipe/cuisine adaptation*
If you don't tick any of the above boxes, let me commend pasta (shells - see, there go the purists, lost on a Sunday night) with chorizo, fennel and tomato, all cooked up with Blyton-esque lashing of garlic and chilli. Cook crumbled chorizo and sliced fennel in olive oil for a while. Throw in as much garlic and chilli as you can. Chuck in crushed tomatos or passata and red wine. Cook for a while longer. Cook pasta till al dente and drain. Toss into the sauce and cook a bit further. Lots of salt. Dish it up. Bit of pepper. Bit more salt. Parmesan it up. Sit on couch. Eat. Be well in the world.
* Disclosure. The first time I cooked something like this, it came from the River Cafe Blue cookbook. I wish I could say that a nonna or a trattoria was the origin of this for me. Alas, no.
3 comments:
Just last night I took to a bulb of fennel with a knife for the first time. Mine was sliced and placed in a roasting tray with pork sausages, tomato, thyme, rosemary, garlic and white wine. And just tonight a compadre shared with me a pasta recipe featuring fennel, artichokes, garlic and cream...So I put a firm 'x' in all your boxes and say more garlic, more fennel, more chilli, more pasta, and a happier palate for all.
Fennel AND artichokes AND garlic?? Yum. Ditto the roasted number.
I was given a bottle of blood orange olive oil which dresses the summer fennel like a dream.
I'm still revocering from last night's multi-species roast (mad cow in one dish, chorizo with spuds in another, then slightly gratuitous smoked trout in the salad), which means I'm crunching raw fennel at my desk. The others in the office appear not to understand...
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