Braised fennel

I hope you are all having a relaxing Sunday! My day has started very chilled, the sun is shining, I'm slowly making coffee and some pretzel rolls are waiting to be eaten. I will head out soon, as the weather really seems to be lovely, but first I wanted to share a dish with you that I made yesterday.

This braised fennel that I pretty much improvised made such a lovely side to our Saturday night dinner. We had buttery potato mash and a veggie Schnitzel with it. It was basically comfort food, but kind of with a touch of spring. The liquid of the fennel made a perfect sauce to moisten the dish a bit, and actually the liquid is probably my favourite bit. I think that this braised fennel would go with many kind of dishes, even just with a salad. The cooking only needs some patience, as I think I cooked it for a couple of hours, just slow baking in the oven. The preparation itself is not much work, though.

Braised fennel

Ingredients

1 fennel bulb

100 ml vegetable stock

1 tsp salt

Sprinkle of ground black pepper

100 ml white wine

3 garlic cloves

100 g grated cheese (I used a Cheddar and Red Leicester mix)

Method

Cut the fennel into four slices and remove the hard stalk. Cut the green bits on the top into finer slices. Put the thin slices on the bottom of an oven dish and then the larger fennel bits on the top.

Pour the vegetable stock in and season with salt and pepper. Cover the dish with a foil and slow bake at about 180 C for one hour. Have a look sometimes, how the fennel is doing and turn the pieces around midway of the cooking.

Chop the garlic finely. Once the fennel is already fairly soft, pour the wine in, and cook some more. At this stage I removed the foil, and also added the garlic.

After a while, add the cheese and bake until it has melted.

Enjoy!

Your VegHog