Fried potatoes with fennel
1/2 to 1 bulb fennel, to taste
a handful of potatoes (i.e. as many potatoes as you care to hold in one hand -- one big one, two medium ones, several small ones)
butter or oil for cooking
a little salt and plenty of pepper
Remove stalks and fronds from the fennel (save them for your next fish bake or some other use); separate the bulb into ribs, trim, and wash. Slice across the ribs, rather like chopping celery, to make strips no more than 1/4 inch wide (that is, the pieces should be the width of the fennel rib by about 1/8 to 1/4 inch); set aside. Scrub or peel the potatoes, depending on their age and your preference, and slice them no more than 1/4 inch thick. If desired, cut cross-wise into french-fry-like sticks, but they can also be cooked as disks or half disks. Get the potatoes cooking over moderate heat in the butter or oil, season, and add the fennel strips. Spread out the pieces as much as possible so they get a chance to brown, especially the potatoes, and turn them frequently until done and lightly browned in many places. Serves one as a meal, 2-3 as a side dish.
The rest of the story
Last weekend I helped harvest potatoes for the food bank, getting covered with dirt in the process and pulling a few muscles. I love digging potatoes -- well, technically someone else did the actual digging, I got to crawl around in the dirt collecting them as the shovel exposed them.
Digging potatoes is a bit like hunting for buried treasure, only the result is more certain. Or maybe more like a subterranean Easter egg hunt; in any case, I had a couple of hours of fun and the food bank got crates of lovely red-skinned potatoes. So I thought I'd post a nice simple recipe.
There should still be fennel available; if not, you can always bake them in cream instead.
Esperanta traduko: this post is also available in Esperanto, because Dana is a language geek.
