Experiments in learning how to grill continue. I picked up some beautiful farm fennel at Carnivore Oak Park, trimmed off the green fronds (nice to save for plating and/or tossing into soup), peeled off the tough outer layer, cut out the core, sliced the fennel into 1/4″ slices, tossed it in oil, salt, and pepper, and grilled for 8 minutes, turning once.
It was SO GOOD. Roshani had brought over some lentil curry for lunch with Jed, and I’d also grilled some chicken tikka (and some chicken of the woods mushrooms, report on that in a future post), and we pulled out various things from the fridge and freezer and made fresh red rice, but the best part of the meal was clearly the combination of grilled fennel and lentils and rice and chicken — those four together were beautiful.
Fennel straight up is too licorice-y for me, but once grilled, it gets soft and buttery and tastes like a more complex version of grilled onions; the licorice is still there, but as a light afternote. Yum.
