fennel

strawberry, fava bean, fennel and radish salad / insalata di fragole, fave, finocchio e ravanello

| Simona

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IMG_4362

Farm-fresh iceberg lettuce inspired this serving option
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

Our current Cook the Books Club selection is the memoir Taste by actor Stanley Tucci1. The book included a couple of interesting sections, one pertaining the history of the highly enjoyable movie Big Night (1996),2 in which Tucci played the younger brother, Secondo. I didn't know that he had written the screenplay. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.

The other section I enjoyed was where Felicity (now Tucci's wife) prepared roasted potatoes in a way that first surprised then alarmed the author, but that in the end won the family's approval. Although the last part of the book focuses on the cancer diagnosis Tucci received, the intense treatment he underwent and his recovery, overall the book is pretty light. I wish—and this is on the publisher, not the author—that it had been proofread by an Italian.

Reading the book in the run-up to the 16th anniversary of my little blog, made me think of all the recipes I have created for it. I decided to select a recipe from the early years and update it based on my current eating habits. The recipe I chose comes from a July 2008 post3 and features seasonal ingredients quite representative of Italian cuisine. The salad also happens to include the colors of the Italian flag (called tricolore): white, red and green (bianco, rosso e verde).

fava beans, fennel, strawberries / IMG_4360

before the salad there are pretty ingredients
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

When I first moved to California, 28 years ago, it was hard to find fava beans and fennel, two foods that had been part of my life since childhood. In time, the situation changed and now I can easily purchase them where I live, when in season.

Fava beans make me think of my father, who loved them eaten fresh from the pods, with just a bit of salt. Fennel reminds me of my godfather, who ate some at the end of every meal (wiped clean with a cloth, not washed, an instruction I follow).

Even after so many years in California, our long strawberry season still thrills me. As a child, the weeks during which strawberries were available always seemed to pass too quickly. Now I know that I have time to enjoy a favorite fruit for several months.

IMG_4361

Ready for bright colors: the view from above
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

For this update, I added a radish to the ingredients, a small peppery note to balance the sweetness of berries. (I had the idea after taking the photo above, so the radish is absent from it). Finally, a beautiful head of iceberg lettuce (lattuga iceberg) inspired me to make small boats for serving. To eat, close the leaf into a wrapper and enjoy the combination.

Print-friendly version of briciole's recipe for Strawberry, fava bean, fennel and radish salad

Ingredients :

  • 7 ounces / 200 grams strawberries, possibly organic
  • 1 teaspoon / 5 ml balsamic vinegar
  • 1 pound / 450 grams fresh fava beans
  • 1 small fennel bulb
  • 1 radish
  • 2 tablespoons / 30 ml extra-virgin olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon / 15 ml balsamic vinegar
  • 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt, or to taste
  • A pinch of freshly ground black pepper
  • 1/4 teaspoon stone-ground mustard
  • 4-5 leaves of fresh basil, chiffonade
  • 1 teaspoon minced fennel frond

Wash, hull and slice the strawberries, then season them with the balsamic vinegar. Toss and set aside to marinate.

Shell the fava beans and blanch them for 30 seconds, then drain them and plunge them into a bowl of ice-cold water to stop the cooking. Slit the skin with your thumbnail then pinch or twist to slip the bright green core out of its coat and into a small bowl. Set aside.

Trim and clean the fennel bulb, leaving an inch or so of the green stalk to hold it when slicing. Quarter, cut off the core, and slice thinly using a mandoline. Set aside.

Grate the radish using the extra-coarse side of a hand grater.  

Bring the ingredients together in a serving bowl.

Pour the olive oil and balsamic vinegar into a small glass jar. Add sat, pepper and mustard. Put the lid on and shake vigorously. Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables and toss.Taste and adjust seasoning, as needed.

Sprinkle basil and fennel frond.

Toss again and serve as a side dish (contorno) or appetizer (antipasto). Alternatively, spoon some salad on iceberg lettuce leaves and serve.

Serves 3 (4 if served on iceberg lettuce).

For future reference (i.e., when it will be my turn to host Cook the Books. Tucci describes a meal he shared with legendary Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni4:

After dinner Marcello ordered a digestivo. This consisted of a half a shot of amaro and a half a shot of Fernet-Branca.

1 The book's page on the publisher's website
2 Big Night
3 From briciole's archive: Strawberry, fava bean and fennel salad
4 My favorite image of Mastroianni, by Diane Arbus

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post

insalata di fragole, fave, finocchio e ravanello

or launch the insalata di fragole, fave, finocchio e ravanello audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

CtBThis is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Deb of Kahakai Kitchen. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

The roundup of the event.

FTC disclosure: I have received the table linen free of charge from the manufacturer (la FABBRICA del LINO). I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting it on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.

strawberry, fava bean, fennel, radish, salad

recipe: strawberry, fava bean, fennel and radish salad

| Simona

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bean, fennel and mushroom stew / stufato di fagioli, finocchi e funghi

| Simona
bean, fennel and mushroom stew / IMG_2821

a delicious combination of flavors
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

Our Cook the Books Club selection, the novel The Language of Flowers1 by Vanessa Diffenbaugh takes place in places familiar to me: San Francisco and Napa Valley. The book tells the story of young Victoria, who, after bouncing from one foster family to the next, ages out of the system and ends up homeless. The novel goes back and forth between the present and a time in the past when Victoria's foster mother was Elizabeth, a winegrower in Napa, who wanted to be a caring mother for Victoria, though the girl's behavior is quite challenging.

In the present, Victoria finds work in a flower shop in San Francisco (owned by Renata), where her gift for working with flowers and in particular matching flowers to people shines. She learned the language of flowers (linguaggio dei fiori) from Elizabeth, who grew up in a flower farm. For the most part, the story kept my attention: it is difficult not to hope for Victoria to finally establish some healthy relationships, and Diffenbaugh's writing is appealing, delicate and evocative.

The book includes a dictionary associating flowers to their meaning. At the farmers' market I saw some beautiful fennel, a plant that blooms tall with flowers similar to those of parsley (both plants are umbellifers, they have umbrella-shaped flowers). According to the dictionary, the meaning of fennel is strength. I like that!

fennel with fronds / IMG_2817

farm-fresh fennel with fronds

Around the same time, one evening I had dinner with a friend and we shared a dish called White Bean Ragout2 (white beans braised with fennel, wild mushrooms, tomatoes, herb brown butter, charred broccolini). It was excellent and made me decide to create a personal version using dry Coco Nero (black coco) beans3, beech mushrooms, fennel and oven-roasted tomatoes.

Coco Nero beans / IMG_2816

Coco Nero beans (with a couple of "guests")
(placemat by La FABBRICA del LINO)

I loved the result and immediately made a second batch, relying on Early Girl tomatoes' long season. All the ingredients came from the farmers' market, which I consider a bit like the flower market where Renata gets her supplies and where Victoria meets Grant, Elizabeth's nephew and the only person who speaks the language of flowers at her level.

brown beech mushrooms / IMG_2813

brown beech mushrooms at the farmers' market

Another excellent stew added to my repertoire! The recipe can be made with other varieties of beans that are good in stews. After I ran out of Coco Nero beans, I used beans riso bianco di Sarconi ("white rice" from Sarconi, a town in Basilicata, Italy). When the supply of Early Girl tomatoes I have been relying on finally dries up, I plan to try using used canned fire-roasted tomatoes. 

Print-friendly version of briciole's recipe for Bean, fennel and mushroom stew

Ingredients:

  • 4 ounces / 113 g dry Coco Nero beans (or a variety of beans good in stews)
  • 2 cups / 475 ml water
  • 1/2 small onion, halved
  • 1 garlic clove, peeled
  • A small bay leaf
  • 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt
  • 1 pound / 450 g Early Girl tomatoes OR one 14.5 ounces / 411 g can of fire-roasted crushed tomatoes
  • 3 tablespoons / 45 ml extra-virgin olive oil
  • 4 ounces / 113 g red onion, finely diced or quartered and thinly sliced (clean weight)
  • 4 ounces / 113 g fennel, stalk trimmed, quartered, cored and thinly sliced lengthwise (clean weight)
  • 3 garlic cloves, minced
  • 4 ounces / 113 g brown beech mushrooms
  • 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt, or to taste
  • A few grinds of the pepper mill, or to taste
  • 1 tablespoon minced fennel fronds

Notes: 1. I do not soak dry beans before cooking them. 2. The beans and roasted tomatoes can be prepared ahead of time.

Place the beans in a saucepan with the water, onion, garlic, bay leaf and salt. Bring the water to a lively boil, then turn down the heat and let the beans simmer, covered, until they are tender. Taste them once the skin is no longer wrinkled and estimate if/how much longer they should cook. Check the beans at regular intervals and add some hot water, as needed to keep all the beans moist.

Let the beans cool in their cooking broth, then remove the aromatics and discard them. Let the beans rest in their broth until ready to use.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 350 F / 177 C. Line a baking sheet with a silicone mat. Halve each tomato crosswise and place on the baking sheet. Roast for 1 hour. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and transfer the tomatoes to a bowl. Once cool, cut each piece in half or into quarters (depending on size). Note: skip this step if using canned fire-roasted tomatoes and just add the tomatoes where the recipe instructs you to do it.

In a Dutch oven or sauté pan, warm up the olive oil on medium heat, turn down the heat to medium-low and cook the onion for 2 minutes, stirring often. Add the fennel, stir and cook for 2 minutes, stirring often. Cover and continue cooking until the fennel is tender.

Add the garlic, stir and cook for one minute. Add the chopped tomatoes, stir, cover and continue cooking for 5 minutes, regulating the heat so as to maintain a gentle boil.

Halve the mushroom cluster and cut off the base, making sure not to remove any edible part. With your hands, separate the cluster into individual mushrooms. Set aside.

Add the beans and their broth to the pan. If it is dry, add 1/4 cup / 60 ml of water, stir, cover and continue cooking for 5 minutes, regulating the heat so as to maintain a gentle boil.

Add the mushrooms and stir well. Cover and cook until the mushrooms are tender, about 5 minutes, stirring well after 2 minutes.

Sprinkle the sea salt and pepper, then taste to adjust salt. Sprinkle the fennel fronds and stir. Take the pan off the heat and serve the stew warm. Enjoy!

Serves 4

1 The book page on the author's website.
2 Cafe Brio menu
3 Thanks to La Tercera farm in Bolinas for growing special produce (Coco Bianco beans were featured in an earlier post)

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post:

stufato di fagioli, finocchi e funghi

or launch the stufato di fagioli, finocchi e funghi audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]

CtBThis is my contribution to the current selection of our Cook the Books hosted by Debra of Eliot's Eats. (You can find the guidelines for participating in the event on this page.)

The roundup of the event.

Souper Sundayslogo And I am contributing my fruit salad also to Souper (Soup, Salad & Sammies) Sundays, a weekly event created by Cook the Books club co-host Deb of Kahakai Kitchen.

 The roundup of the event.

FTC disclosure: I have received the table linen free of charge from the manufacturer (la FABBRICA del LINO). I have not and will not receive any monetary compensation for presenting it on my blog. The experience shared and the opinions expressed in this post are entirely my own.

beans, fennel, mushroom, tomatoes, stew

recipe: bean, fennel and mushroom stew

| Simona

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finocchio / fennel

| Simona

Some time ago, I mentioned finocchio as one of the elements of a traditional Italian appetizer called verdure in pinzimonio, which includes a selection of raw vegetables (carrots, celery, fennel, radishes, etc.) to be dipped into a sauce made of olive oil, salt and pepper, and possibly vinegar or lemon juice. Each guest gets his or her own small plate of sauce.

Growing up, I ate fennel salad often, the bulb cut into bite-size pieces and seasoned with the usual combination of oil, vinegar and salt. You can slice the fennel thinly instead: I like the bite-size version, because each morsel causes a little explosion of flavor in your mouth. Sometimes my mother would serve fennel cut vertically into 6 or 8 sections at the end of a meal, to be eaten plain: its crisp flavor is quite refreshing. I didn’t know that finocchio is called Florence fennel here.  

Until recently, my favorite way of eating cooked fennel was au gratin. Then, to the old preference a new one was added: Fennel and Leek Soup with Fennel Greens (zuppa di finocchi e porri con foglie di finocchio) a dish that has become an instant hit in the household. The recipe comes from my beloved Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. In it, Madison suggests to use the trimmings from its ingredients to make Quick (vegetable) Stock, something I recommend doing, because the result is a deeply flavored soup that will enchant your palate. I ended up making more stock than I needed for the soup, so I froze the rest, which means I have a little stash for future use.

fennel soup

I followed both recipes to the letter, halving the quantity of the ingredients for the soup and substituting the cream (which in any case is optional) with some of my own cheese, freshly grated. The thinly sliced fennel and potato and the chopped leek and onion form a great quartet of flavors, with the vegetable stock providing the background and the fennel greens a tasty decoration.

Fennel This post is my contribution to the current edition of Fresh Produce of the Month, an event created by my friend Marta, An Italian in the US. You have a few days left to send your fennel-flavored ideas to Marta.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post: 

finocchio

or launch the finocchio  audio file [mp3].

 

insalata di fragole, fave e finocchi / strawberry, fava bean and fennel salad

| Simona

I have recently written about strawberries, since I used them in a cobbler, and in a Danish braid. I also wrote about fragola a while ago. Today, I will describe a way of using the beloved berry in a savory setting. A typical savory use for strawberries is as an ingredient of risotto. However, since I have developed a recipe for risotto with another berry, I am putting off elaboration of this topic until a later date.

A few nights ago, I concocted an alliterative salad. However, the alliteration works only in Italian: insalata di fragole, fave e finocchi (strawberry, fava bean and fennel salad). This fusion was the result of random acts of purchase. I got the three ingredients with different ideas in mind, then decided to hijack them into a salad. The result worked well and I realized that the color combination, which was not at all part of my concerns, matches that of the Italian flag: bianco, rosso e verde (white, red and green), contributed by fennel, strawberries and fava beans, respectively. The Italian flag is a tricolore (tricolor) and sometimes referred to by that name. The green of fava beans is not the same green as that of the Italian flag, so I added basilico (basil) to strengthen the green component of the salad.

I prepared each element separately, then combined them:

  • fragole: wash, hull and slice 1/2 lb of strawberries, then season them with a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Toss and set aside to marinate for a little while.
  • fave: get the beans out of 1 lb of pods and blanch them briefly. Let cool, then remove the tough outer layer. Set aside.
  • finocchi: wash carefully a fennel bulb and slice thinly, possibly using a mandoline.

IMGP6056

Bring the ingredients together in a serving bowl and mix. Season as desired. I tend to stay very close to the tradition I grew up with, i.e., olive oil and vinegar. Make the first good quality and the second balsamic and you cannot go wrong. Add salt and freshly-ground pepper to taste and toss. Add a few leaves of fresh basil, finely shredded, toss again and serve. The combination of textures is another interesting characteristic of this simple summer salad.

Strawberry This is my contribution to Fresh Produce of the Month, a fun event organized by Marta of An Italian in the US. There is time until July 21 to contribute to il mese delle fragole (strawberry month).

Here is the roundup of the event.

Click on the button to hear me pronounce the Italian words mentioned in the post: 

insalata di fragole, fave e finocchi

or launch the  insalata di fragole, fave e finocchi  audio file [mp3].

[Depending on your set-up, the audio file will be played within the browser or by your mp3 player application. Please, contact me if you encounter any problems.]