Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Fennel and Orange Tomato Sauce


Today I am going to start simple and make a fennel and Orange tomato sauce. I'm never cooked with Fennel before. The recipe is from Sept. Oct. 2006 Cook's Magazine. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to publish the recipe, but I will until I get a cease and desist letter.

This is enough for 1 lb of pasta

4 tbs. ex. virgin olive oil
1 med. bulb of fennel, cored, stalks removed and diced
2 med. cloves of garlic diced
.5 tsp. fennel seeds, crushed
1/8 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 strips of orange peels 1 in. X 3 in.
3 tbs. orange juice
3 lbs of ripe tomatoes cored, seeded peeled and diced
3 tbs. fresh basil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon Ground black pepper

1. cook fennel in OO for 4-6 min. then add garlic, peel, fennel seeds, pepper flakes. Cook for 30 sec. then add tomatoes. Cook that for 10 min.
2. remove peel then add juice, basil salt and pepper and sugar if it seems like it needs it.
3. serve over pasta w/ 2 more tbs. of OO

So I followed the recipe to the T. No substitutions of changes. I used the very available NJ (local) tomatoes. They have been terrific in everything we have used this in so far this season. Peeling and seeding them was kind of a pain (you have to boil them for a short time until the skin splits then run them under cold water and the skin peels away).

This recipe turned out to be a real dog. Flavorless for the most part. It might bee better if I doubled of tripled everything but the tomatoes. I froze it thinking that maybe I will dress it up later on. Hey, it might even taste better latter, but I doubt it.

UPDATE: I recently deforsted and tried this sauce and it didn't suck at all.

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