See Also: Cooking Club · D'Arrigo Bros. / Andy Boy recipes · France · Vegetable Dishes
Fenouil À La Niçoise
From Dorothy McNett's recipes at www.dorothymcnett.com. Thomas Jefferson said "The fennel is beyond every other vegetable, delicious. It greatly resembles in appearance the largest size celery, perfectly white, and there is no vegetable equals it in flavour. It is eaten at dessert, crude, and with, or without dry salt, indeed I preferred it to every other vegetable, or to any fruit." And, my version is to peel the garlic cloves and then eat them with the fennel...however in early days they were cooked unpeeled and then tossed out after cooking. EAT YOUR GARLIC!!
2 pounds fennel bulbs
1/4 cup olive oil
1 head garlic, cloves separated and loose husk removed, but unpeeled (or peel them and eat them and enjoy!)
salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
Remove and discard the outer blemished stalks from the fennel bulbs. Trim off the tubular stems, reserving the leaves, and split the bulbs in half, lengthwise. In sauté pan, heat olive oil and then place the fennel halves in the pan, cut sides down, and fill in with the garlics. Sprinkle with salt, cover, and cook until the cut sides are a light golden brown. Turn the fennel halves, salt again, cover and lightly brown the other sides in the same way. This all takes about 30 minutes. Uncover and pour about half of the wine over the fennel. Shake the pan gently until the liquid comes to a boil, cover, and braise for about 1 hour on low heat, adding wine from time to time to keep the fennel from drying out. Chop the reserved leaves and sprinkle over just before serving.
Recipe created 1994-09-16.
