Battle Fennel

One of the things I love about Tuesdays is the Farmer's Market, in front of the MCA. Today I picked up fennel - which I've never cooked with before or eaten. It's basically the baby of leek and aniseed (in my tastebud's opinion). Here's what I ended up making with it.

The chicken was seasoned with sea salt, black pepper, rosemary, garlic, and chopped up fennel stalk - and saute-ed for just a couple minutes on each side to brown the outside. I then stuck it in the oven to bake with some bigger pieces of saute-ed fennel, yellow onion, and garlic. Everything was covered with a light coat of olive oil while baking.

The hummus that the chicken and fennel were plated over was made by blending chickpeas, a very little bit of lemon juice, olive oil, and sea salt at first. After this, I added some concentrated tea (South African rooibos), a drop of vanilla extract, honey, and cinnamon. The rooibos tea has a very subtle sweet, aromatic flavor.

The couscous was infused with the rooibos tea, and also mixed with some toasted pistachios and dried cranberries and a bit of butter.

Basically, I wanted to complement the liqourice flavor of the fennel with the aromatic sweetness of the rooibos. Overall, I was pretty satisfied with the way the flavors worked together - especially when the chicken was dipped in hummus and eaten with a small piece of fennel and a spoonful of couscous. I was also happy with the way the natural oils of the pistachio complemented the flavor of the tea.

However, I need to figure out how to make couscous fluffy - I'm still not a big fan of it. After a grueling exam though, it was nice to sit down to a nice meal with a couple of my favorite people =)