Friday Night Cooking: Fried Fennel and Pot Roast

Friday night, still standing (a miracle in itself, shout out to C, my partner in teaching crimes!) and cooking a delicious meal, look at how domestic I can be!   I knew that I would need some time to cook the pot roast, so immediately after walking through the door, and changing into my cookin' pants, I was ready to go. The pot roast recipe was very simple, brown an onion in a large quantity of butter, add meat, add vinegar and cook for two hours.  I did these things, not without a huge smoke cloud forming from adding the vinegar.  Of course this threatened to set off my smoke alarms.  Thank goodness one of my future sisters in-law walked into the kitchen and scared the crap out of me because she helped with life saving ventilation.

After starting the Pot Roast with Cream, I started perusing The Silver Spoon and realized I could make something with my stray fennel.  As a child, I had an extreme dislike for two things:  meatloaf and black licorice.  Suffice it to say, I managed to outgrow my dislike of meatloaf.  I still hate the taste, smell, heck even the sight of black licorice.  Due to this prejudice, I avoid licorice tasting things such as fennel.  I even dislike sweet italian sausage because of the seeds of fennel.

I purchased some fennel because of a recipe I thought I would cook during the week that I didn't have the rest of the ingredients to do.  (I know, you are shocked)   I wanted to use the alien vegetation before it went bad and luckily found a very simple recipe to keep me occupied as my pot roast roasted.  Essentially, to make fried fennel, you first boil the fennel in salted water for 45 minutes, then slice it and bread it with parmesan cheese and fry it in butter.

I set the fennel to boil while my pot roast was roasting and experienced a new feeling in the kitchen, I had nothing to do. My fiance, his brother and my BFF were playing Super Mario on the Wii in the living room omitting the option of me relaxing on the couch,  so I cleaned and watched Bones on my tiny kitchen TV, cleaned some more, stabbed the fennel to see if it was softening, cleaned, and finally the fennel was ready to come out of its boil.

The directions say to slice the fennel thinly, pat it dry and bread it with egg wash and cheese.  I was lost at "slice thinly."  The bulb of fennel had a couple of branches, so the thin slices started to fall apart as I cut them.   The sliced, boiled fennel truly looked more like weird onion rings.  I went with it, and fried the life out of them in butter.   They were so delicious and not licorice like at all!  As soon as the fennel was fried, it was time to finish the pot roast.  I took the meat aside and added a cup of cream to the pot liquor and stirred until it thickened.  Dinner was served.  I evened out the spread with a green salad dressed with homemade vinaigrette.  

Two more recipes down, less than two thousand to go.  I loved the pot roast, but the fennel was the stand out of the evening.   Fennel, you have converted me!  At 29, I am finally growing up, now there is no food I will avoid.  I should have known, C. told me that it was good, and she totally knows what is up when it comes to Italian cooking.  What foods have you grown to love?