The first time fennel in my kitchen

Become aware of the overfishing problem!


Pacific cod caught by trawl or Atlantic cod



Pacific cod caught by longline



Florence fennel: does not already its name sounds beautiful? For the very first time I met fennel in a restaurant but we did not quite like each other.


Okay, that time I was not into cooking like I am now and I also did not give it a fair chance. I realize that more and more I use ingredients that I hated before: e.g. garlic. Meanwhile I use it quite often and I can not imagine why I left it away for such a long time. What a pity! Therefore I love to experiment with vegetables that I either did not eat before or did not like and quite often I am surprised about the result and I must say afterwards: it was delicious!


Yesterday I had fennel first time in my kitchen and I decided to prepare it in different ways. I wanted to try to make a fennel espuma (=foam: that is a culinary technique invented by Spanish chef Ferran Adrià and consist of natural flavors mixed with a gelling agent such as agar, and extruded through a whipped cream canister equipped with N2O cartridges) however my fear became real, because I knew that my equipment may not be the right one, as I did not have the right cartridges, so as I expected it did not work out. But of course I did not want to throw it away so I simply warmed the whole thing and added some milk and foamed it that way. It was pretty delicious. I served it among an almond crusted cod (for the crust I mixed ground almond, orange juice, some fresh ginger, a shallot and a bit of dijon mustard), caramelized fennel with oranges and polenta with fennel chips.