Cookin' Thyme

Friday, February 16, 2007

I am happy to report that it's not all dead herbs around here. The garden, even in the cold weather, is still giving us a steady supply of fresh thyme and oregano.

I used a bunch of thyme to flavor up one of my favorite veggies as of late: fennel. This is fennel caramelised in a sweet brown sugar sauce, resting atop a bed of creamy polenta dotted with savory crumbles of blue cheese. The recipe is in Donna Hay's Off the Shelf: Cooking from the Pantry, which features dreamy food photography that makes my mouth water every time I look through it. My photo doesn't quite do justice to how good this meal tastes. It's crunchy and creamy, savory and sweet, all rolled up into one.

Fennel is a vegetable we're going to try growing in our garden this year. We're starting it from seed, so I imagine it will be a while before we get our own tasty stalks to include in a dish like this.

5 Comments:

Blogger Carolie said...

I LOVE fresh thyme! I will have to try this recipe...thank you.

My favorite thyme recipe: I sautee some chopped onion in a little butter until soft, toss in a bunch of julienned yellow squash and zucchini, sprinkle on some fresh variegated lemon thyme (the lemon is best in this recipe), and saute, tossing, until heated through and barely cooked (not slimy!) Good hot or at room temperature!

6:50 AM  
Blogger Christa said...

Carolie,
I am growing lemon thyme, too, and this sounds like a great way to put it to use. Thank you for your recipe! :-)

9:27 AM  
Blogger Gattina Cheung said...

I think your photos are superb! Can't take my eyes off from your dish!

9:26 AM  
Blogger Annie in Austin said...

Hello Christa,

You might have to be hard-hearted to enjoy homegrown fennel - we planted some, but couldn't bring ourselves to kill generation after generation of Swallowtail caterpillars.
Maybe with net or row cover the adult female could not have reached the fennel leaves and laid those eggs?

Annie at the Transplantable Rose

6:56 PM  
Blogger Christa said...

Hmmm. Swallowtail caterpillars. I could never bring myself to kill a Swallowtail caterpillar! We'll see how it goes. While I'm really hoping to get some edible fennel, it might actually be interesting to see if we attract Swallowtails. We have the butterlies around here, but I've never seen the caterpillars on anything in my garden.

9:21 AM  

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