Finally.....a recipe

It’s been a while since I’ve offered up a recipe. One reason for this is that I’ve been in a bit of a rut lately in the kitchen. I go through phases where I want the same thing over and over again. This time, it’s been brown rice with broccoli, and soba noodles with peanut sauce.

Another reason I haven’t offered up a new recipe is simply because, well, I haven’t had a good one. There was an attempt at pad thai at which I was WAY too heavy handed on the fish sauce and ended up with a super salty catastrophe (I’d like to give kudos here to fiancé Sven for eating that mess with a smile on his face). There was also a co-attempt with my sister at homemade macaroni and cheese at which we learned that homemade macaroni and cheese that isn’t lumpy is an art we have yet to master. I think I'm sticking with Annie’s boxed, for a while anyway.

But finally, this week I managed to not only break out of my cooking rut, but to also do it successfully, ending in a fantastic, soul-warming, delicious-enough-to-write-about Fennel and Leek Soup.

So here it is, folks.

Start by slicing up one fennel bulb.

It sounds so simple when I just say it like that, doesn't it?

I actually worked really hard to de-core the fennel (who knew fennel needed de-coring anyway), and then started cutting the bulb the wrong way, so I ended up with multi-shaped pieces of fennel, which isn’t really ideal. I finally came around to realizing that the best way to cut the bulb was longwise, resulting in strips.  I’m sorry there aren’t any pictures of this process, but trust me, it wasn’t worth documenting, and I was having a tough enough time of it already, let alone trying to take pictures in the middle of it. Moving on. Be sure to reserve the top of the fennel bulb because you’ll use the fronds at the end.

I added the fennel to a soup pot with about ½ tblsp of olive oil and ¼ tblsp of butter.

I then proceeded to cook the fennel over a medium low heat for 15-18 minutes until it turned a lovely brown and began to caramelize.

Next came two leeks. Leeks can be really sandy, so you have to take the time to clean them thoroughly. The best way I’ve discovered to do this is to cut the ends off of the leek and then slit it longwise so that it opens up in a fan, like so:

You can then run this under water and remove the sand from all layers of the leek.

I cut up the leeks and added them to the pot with the fennel.

Next came some thyme from about 10 sprigs, and I let this all go over medium-low heat until the leeks cooked down as well, probably another 10-15 minutes.

Even though it took awhile to get this part of the soup done (and I admit – I very rarely have the patience to get something to even a SEMBLANCE of being caramelized),  it went really quickly from here on out. I do think that letting the fennel and leeks cook down is what gave the soup so much of its great flavor in the end. And I’m sure the butter didn’t hurt.

I then dumped in one 15 oz can of no-salt-added diced tomatoes, one 15 oz can of rinsed and drained great northern beans (you could use any beans you want here, or even skip them all together), and about 4 ½ cups of low-sodium vegetable broth (you can also alter this amount as you would like to make it more soup-y or less). I added a ½ tsp of ground ginger and 1 tblsp of honey (I think the honey is also optional, but I like to add something a little sweet to almost anything with tomatoes in it to cut some of the acidity), and then salt and pepper to taste.

I let that all cook up to temperature, and about 5 minutes before it was ready I cut up 2 tblsp’s of the fennel fronds and added them in…..and with some parmesan cheese sprinkled on the top, that was it folks!  And it was delish!



Food styling courtesy of fiance Sven.

One note is that while this was excellent as is, my new ventures into eating meat have caused me to become mildly obsessed with sausage, so I think adding a nice chicken or turkey (or pork, I suppose) sausage to this would add a great flavor.

This really was the perfect dinner on a really cold February night, and the perfect dish to snap me out of my current rut….. although don’t you think some soba noodles and peanut sauce also sounds pretty good right now?