Fennel, once more from the top—with feeling

Even after polishing off a fennel bulb pasta dish, I was still practically cackling with glee over the fennel tops I had left. As the great-grandchild of northern Italian immigrants, I am mindful of the happy marriage among pork, fennel, garlic, and black pepper into porchetta (pronounce it porKETta but don’t let me catch you spelling it that way). I was itching to make this beloved special-occasion dish from my childhood.

I have a recipe (well, it’s more like driving directions) scrawled onto a paper a few years ago while talking to Grandma on the phone. It calls for me to butterfly a Boston butt roast, stuff it with herbs, tie it up with string, and roast it for a few hours. Did I mention it’s July? I’m not roasting. Instead, I’d make the porchetta with a tenderloin, close it up with a kebab skewer, and let it rest overnight. Brilliant! I planned a honey-orange glazed carrot side dish and a small green salad. Then I called my fellow pork-loving Italian-American friend Judy and cajoled her into coming for dinner.

Porchetta tenderloin tasted much like the roasts I remembered: tender, savory pork perfumed with the unmistakable sweet spice of fennel. In absence of long roasting, the garlic was sharp rather than mellow. When it got too intense for me, I scraped the herbs off and let the meat’s flavor sweep me back in time to family gatherings when I was so young my gaze was at tabletop level. I remembered standing eye to eye with plates of cold sliced porchetta to be served in split buttered hard rolls. “This is really good the next day,” I mentioned to Judy around a mouthful. “Next day?!” she said as she speared another slice.

Of course we didn’t get to find out about cold porchetta. I’m afraid we stayed up too late on a work night, drank too much red wine, and ate that whole tenderloin. And I’m not ashamed to suggest that we do it again the very next chance we get.

Buon appetito!


Porchetta Tenderloin

If you’re within driving distance of the Minneapolis Farmers Market, buy from Tollefson’s Family Pork. Best. Pork. EVER.

1 lb pork tenderloin
Fronds from 2 small bulbs of fennel, chopped fine. I guess I had 2/3 cup or more.
3 big cloves of garlic, minced
¼ cup fresh ground black pepper, divided
1 t salt

First, you’re going to butterfly the tenderloin. Well, more like you’re going to caterpillar it. Pretend like you’re going to cut it into medallions about ¾ inch thick. Don’t cut all the way through, though—only about ¾ of the way.

In a small bowl, mix the fennel, garlic, salt, and half the pepper. Stuff some of the mix into each cut. Use it all. Thread a kebab skewer through the tenderloin from end to end, near the top, to hold the butterfly cuts closed. Rub the tenderloin with the remaining black pepper, covering it well. Bundle it up tight in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees. Unwrap the tenderloin, put in a shallow pan, and cook 20 to 25 minutes. Remove and let stand 5 minutes, pull out the skewer, and cut the slices the rest of the way through. Serve to acclaim.

Should have served 4, but we were being gluttons about it.


Honey-Orange Glazed Carrots

One of my food heroes, Lynne Rosetto Kasper, puts orange zest in her porchetta. I’m not about to mess with my own family’s recipe, but I understood immediately that she’s right. Here's a compromise side dish.

1 lb carrots, peeled and sliced ½ inch thick
2 T butter
2 T honey
½ cup orange juice

Plunk them all in a pan, people. Simmer, covered, for 10 minutes. Then uncover and simmer about 10 more, stirring often. The sauce will reduce to a glaze. Stir to make sure all the carrots are covered.

If you start this and the pork at the same time, they will be done together, too.

Fennel in Fifteen Minutes Flat

How great is fennel? A fountain of fragrant, feathery green leaves sprouts from the heart of a pale bulb that tastes like no other vegetable in the garden. Having two fennel bulbs AND their fronds feels to me like being rich; I fight the urge to save them all for a special occasion. The fact is, you can’t hoard vegetables. You have to spend them, and the sooner the better.

I’ll cut off the fronds and put them aside for now. Today I'll cook the bulb. It’s delicious roasted, but I can't see my way to roast things on this sunny day in the middle of summer. Besides, that would take soooooooo long, and I'm hungry NOW. I’m going to cook it in butter and serve it on top of pasta.

As it sautés, the fennel fills my kitchen with a spicy-sweet fragrance that makes me think of nothing so much as cookies—particularly, the anise biscotti that my 94-year-old grandmother still makes. The finished dish perfectly balances the sweetness of orange juice and lightly caramelized fennel against the savor of garlic and the warmth of the ginger. The soft richness of the vegetables practically melts onto perfectly al dente pasta. Best of all, it only took fifteen minutes to prepare.

Mangiamo!

Gingered Fennel with Garlic over Pasta

This recipe is modified so heavily from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites (Clarkson Potter, New York, 1996) that the Moosewood Collective would probably disavow it. I would maybe serve this on linguine next time, but whole wheat fusilli is what I had in the cupboard.

You can heat the water while you do the prep work, then boil the pasta while you’re cooking the fennel. Everything will be done together. Hooray!

2 fennel bulbs (mine weighed ¾ pound total)
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tablespoon butter
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger root
1/3 cup orange juice
½ to 1 teaspoon sugar
Salt and pepper to taste
½ pound dry pasta, cooked al dente

Trim the fronds off the fennel, halve and core the bulbs, and slice thin. I sliced up the stalks, too, because I was feeling greedy and wishing I had even more fennel.

Heat the butter in a heavy pan or skillet. Sauté the fennel for about 5 minutes. It will start to color. Add the garlic and sauté 1 to 2 minutes more.

Turn down the heat, add the ginger root and the orange juice, and simmer until the fennel is tender—about 5 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, sprinkle the sugar over the fennel, and season with salt and pepper.

By now your pasta should be done. Drain it and toss or top it with the fennel. This will make between two and four main course servings.

What the Hell Is Amaranth?

What on earth is this stuff, I wonder. Asking around at my local co-op yields little help. The customer service person checks the Internet and blithely reports, "It's like spinach."

No it ain't, I grumble to myself, as I eye the shock of lurid magenta leaves in my refrigerator.

But I'm not daunted for long. I never met a vegetable I didn't like, and this punk rock spinach impostor is not going to get the best of me. I taste a raw leaf and find it earthy and bitter. Aha. A perfect companion for goat cheese. "I am going to make you into a pizza, little one," I tell the bunch of amaranth.

I'm happy with the result. The taste of amaranth is only vaguely reminiscent of spinach. It's got a bitter undertone, a minerally aftertaste, a flavor that approaches sweetness but shies away at the last minute. I'm hardly doing it justice. It's like if Swiss chard decided to take a Charles Atlas bodybuilding course. Like if spinach and beets finally stopped caring what their parents thought and ran away together to Morocco. Like if kale quit its $300K/yr job and joined an ashram instead.

Do try it.

Amaranth and Chevre Pizza

If you have a pizza stone, put it in the oven while you preheat. If you don't have a pizza stone, then do the first part of the baking on a cookie sheet or pizza pan. Slip the crust off the pan, dress it, and put it right on the rack when you return it to the oven.

The crust:

1 cup white flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 package yeast
1/2 t salt

Mix these together. Add all at once:

2 T olive oil
1 cup tepid water (110 degrees F)

Stir together until it is dough. Cover the bowl with a cloth and let rise 25 minutes.

Meanwhile, assemble these things:

A sprinkling of cornmeal or semolina
1 bunch amaranth leaves
1 clove garlic*
1 scallion
1 small chevre (4 ounces is fine)
1-2 T olive oil
Salt and fresh-ground pepper

*I used mild, sweet uncured garlic because it was in the CSA box from Harmony Valley. If you use cured garlic, make it a small clove.

Wash the amaranth and steam it. I shook the water off and put it in a covered bowl in the microwave for 4 minutes, then let it sit another 4 minutes. Press out the excess liquid and chop roughly.

Slice the garlic as thinly as you can. Do the same for the scallion.

Mess up the cheese a little--just make it into chunks that will look pretty on the pizza crust.

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

By now your dough should be ready. With floured hands, turn it out onto a floured surface and give it 6 or 10 quick kneads. Press or roll it about a quarter inch thick.

Sprinkle the cornmeal or semolina on your pizza stone, pan, or cookie sheet. Slip the crust onto the sprinkled sheet and bake 10 minutes. Remove from oven, brush the crust with half the olive oil, and dress it: cheese first, then amaranth, then garlic and scallions, then brush these with the rest of the oil. Sprinkle with salt and a grind or five of fresh black pepper. Return to the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

Let the pizza rest for a couple of minutes before cutting. Mangiamo!

Beet Greens, Garlic, and Romaine

Yesterday I got a box of CSA goodies with all kinds of wonderful stuff in it! What to cook first?

My sig.o, Beth, wanted fish on the grill; we settled on a simple piece of lake trout. Any fish dinner is begging to be served with plenty of good greens. We decided to start with the beet tops, which are highly perishable, and the romaine. I had a lemon lying around, and it became a key component to the meal.

And what a lovely meal! The beet greens provided an earthy, garlicky complement to the trout. Sweet, crunchy romaine played counterpoint to the tang of feta; and the squeeze of lemon brightened all the flavors. We rounded out the meal with a crusty whole-wheat baguette and a choice between iced tea and pinot grigio.

***

Beet Greens with Fresh Garlic and Mirin

1 bunch beet greens, roughly chopped

1/4 cup fresh garlic (I sliced up the still-soft stem)

1 T olive oil 1/4 c. mirin Salt & pepper

Lemon wedges

Saute the beet greens in the olive oil for 2-3 minutes. Toss in the garlic and cook an additional minute. Add the mirin. Cover and turn down the heat a bit. Cook until tender, maybe 5 minutes. Salt & pepper to taste. Finish with a squeeze of lemon.

Romaine, Feta, and Walnut Salad with Lemon Vinaigrette

1 head romaine lettuce, torn up

1/2 cup crumbled Feta cheese

1/2 cup walnut pieces

Toss with this dressing:

3-5 black peppercorns

1 sprig of fresh thyme

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 to 1/2 t grated lemon zest

1 scallion bulb

1 cup olive oil

salt to taste

Put everything except the oil in a blender and pulverize. Drizzle the oil in a thin stream into the running blender.

Try A CSA!

So I got hooked up with a CSA box this week. A Twitter connection led me to @matt_wilson , who was headed out of town and would not be eating his farm share from Harmony Valley Farm.



He decided to give the box away on the condition that the lucky recipient document the experience of eating the contents.



That lucky recipient is me! I could not be more excited. Thank you, Matt!