For the love of Fennel...

I stole this title from my good friend Margaret, who sent me another wonderful recipe she swears by. We both have purchased weekly veggie and fruit shares from Grant farms and are challenged to come up with recipes that use up the fresh ingredients we are provided.

One of the weeks we had fennel.

If you've never had fennel before, here's some information about it. It's a flavorful and aromatic herb, in some ways it reminds me a little of licorice...but not too much as I don't really like licorice but I like fennel. In addition to culinary use, it also has medicinal uses and I've heard is one of the primary ingredients of absinthe...hmm, interesting right? As for culinary, it's featured more in Mediterranean cuisines. It's used either cooked or raw in many dishes like salads, pastas, artichoke dishes, risottos, etc. The fennel seed is also used in meatballs, bread or sausages.

Now typically, I like to eat fennel in a Salad with marinated oranges, red onions, fennel in salt & pepper, olive oil and red wine vinegar.  But this time I wanted to try something different...I think Margaret was reading my mind as the next day she sent me the recipe below, along with the title...it does sound lovely right? Thanks Margaret!

FOR THE LOVE OF FENNEL - A Rice Dish:

• 1 fennel bulb chopped - (discard the stalks)
• 1 onion chopped (medium)
• 1/3 cup Walnuts, chopped or whole (you can use more walnuts if you like, it's up to you)
• 1/3 cup of raisins (try to find some golden raisins if you can)
• Olive oil or walnut oil
• Fennel seeds (optional)
• 1 cup White rice (medium or long grain or even basmati would be nice)
• 2 cups water

In a saucepan, heat your oil, med-high heat. Add the onions and fennel and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add the walnuts, raisins, salt and pepper and fennel seed if used, cook for an additional 7 minutes or until soft. While the above is cooking, prepare your rice...I usually like to rinse my rice in warm water a couple of times (this cleans up the grains and turns out nice rice), then add the rice to the pan, stir until it's well mixed and coated (you want each grain to be coated from the oil), about 1-2 minutes. Then add the water and bring everything to a boil. Once boiling, cover and adjust the heat to low and cook, about 24 minutes. (Note - just like when cooking rice by itself, you want to let it steam and cook on it's own, so try not to lift the lid while it's cooking...as long as your heat is low you should be fine). Once the 24 minutes is up, remove the pan from the heat and check the rice...to finish the rice out, put a clean kitchen towel over the lid of the pan, then put the lid back on and let it stand for another 10 minutes...this will keep the steam in as it cools down a bit. (Note - the kitchen towel is a technique that's used a lot while cooking a lot of persian recipes).

Serve by itself (the walnuts bring in some protein to offset the carbs) or with a side of plain yogurt or I like to make cucumber yogurt...here's my recipe, again I usually do this by feel but will attempt to put in measurements even though you may need to tweak to taste:

CUCUMBER YOGURT SAUCE:

• 1 - 2 cups of Plain yogurt (greek is nice since it's usually a little thicker and not as watery)
• 1/2 to 1 Cucumber, peeled and grated (pour of the liquid after grating...or squeeze the grated cucumber to discard even more liquid)
• 2 tbsp Olive oil (I usually adjust this to taste)
• 2 tbsp Fresh lemon or lime juice (I usually adjust this to taste)
• Salt and pepper
• Optional - garlic and/or super finely chopped mint

Enjoy!