I’ve been hunting for months now for fennel bulbs, but the local supermarket hasn’t been carrying them. Well they used to, but under the name anise which got me all confused!!! But now that I’m in the know, they were without. Finally I decided to hit the supermarket early on a Sunday morning and lo and behold – fennel! I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I HAD to buy it. That night M wanted to grill a steak and make some herb butter (see below), so I thought some roasted veggies would work nicely.
I cut the bulb into eighths, but I would recommend doing them slightly thinner as they’ll take less time to cook and will be on the same schedule as the sweet potatoes which were cut into quarter inch half moons. Everything was tossed with some EVOO, balsamic vinegar and S&P. Into a 380 degree oven for 45 minutes. The fennel was a bit too crunchy for M, but I liked it anyway and threw some in my weekday lunch salads as well!
Along with those roasted veggies, we applied a dry rub - kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper - to a big steak and then grilled it up... We thought we'd try something easy but nice to have on top, so earlier in the day we took out a 1/2 stick of unsalted butter (the real stuff, of course) and let it soften. When good and soft, we added LOTS of herbs - both fresh chopped (oregano, parsley) and dried (more oregano, basil) - and combined with a fork. Then we added the mushy herbed butter to plastic wrap and fold over lengthwise... and then roll along the counter holding the two open ends to form a tight butter roll! 
Pop this back in the fridge and it rehardens - ready to be mined for little slices of herb butter for use on the steak and whatever else you can think of!
Probably would go great with squash too!
ReplyDelete