Monday 17 January 2011

Winter in Madrid and a recipe to share



This winter in Madrid is proving to be particularly enjoyable; not too cold this time round, plenty of home-cooking and good wine, browsing art galleries, day trips (Aranjuez in the photo) and staying in and watching Caprica (and no, I don’t normally like SciFi but this is one of those series that doesn’t include characters that wear spandex jumpsuits or have bony knobbled foreheads or pointy ears, so I’m actually not averse to it!). I just wanted to share a little side dish that I cooked the other day as it was perhaps the first time that I cooked fennel and it turned out just right. Normally I cut it into lengths then braise it with white wine and butter, and while it’s tasty it’s not ‘come back for seconds’ tasty… but the other day D did roast lamb and I decided that I’d do a side to accompany – a quick Google and voilá (Sp?) – fennel with pine nuts and raisins (a mix of various recipes found online). I’m sorry that as usual I don’t have a photo but promise this is delicious and easy peasy!

Ingredients (for 2-3 people as a side)
1 bulb of fennel
Tablespoon of butter
Slug of olive oil
Small handful of raisins/sultanas
Small handful of pine nuts
Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the fennel into more or less 1.5 cm cubes, meanwhile heat up the butter and oil in a pan. Add the fennel and cook for around 5 minutes on a medium heat, add the pine nuts and raisins, cook until the fennel is done – about 10 more minutes in my case. You might want to partially cover the pan if you find the pine nuts and fennel are getting too dark. Add salt and pepper to taste. Goes beautifully with lamb. Enjoy!

5 comments:

Anait said...

Sounds delicious! And now that you've described Caprica I may have to give it a shot as I'm not usually a sci-fi fan, either. Happy Monday!

Anonymous said...

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!!!!!!!!

Ashleigh said...

sounds great, but next time...pics, pics, pics!

Nadya said...

I know, I so need to get into the habit of taking photos of my food before gobbling it down! Anait, I hope you enjoy Caprica :-)

Anonymous said...

Es una pena que ya no escribas. De verdad.

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