Pan-Fried Fennel

This week's box came with two enormous bulbs of fennel, even more enormous stalks and fronds attached. (We might have sort of also maybe had a bulb from the previous week still hanging around, too.)

All the greenery is a bit hard to know what to do with (I'd compost it if certain waste-not types weren't watching), though it has a rhapsodic admirer on Gilt Taste. Between Chowhound and Serious Eats, the best suggestion I saw for the stems was "use them to make stock." Maybe not on a ninety-degree day, guys.

The fronds found their unoriginal end in a large amount of fennel pesto (house recipe, today with walnuts and garlic). The taste is fresh and green -- not excessively licorice-like, I don't think.

There are lots of recipes, however, for the bulbs. Here are two dozen by Martha Stewart and fourteen more from the Huffington Post.

Today's winner was Martha's pan-fried fennel, which has an easy flour-egg-breadcrumb coating (you don't really need a recipe). Three fennel bulbs later, however, I still do not know how she cut the finger-like strips you see in her photo (and I would have ended up with fewer odd-shaped bits if I hadn't tried).

The result, I thought, was not unlike fried seafood -- I'm not sure if that's the Cajun seasoning I added to the flour, a flavor present in the oil (we reuse our fry oil), or some piscine affinity of the vegetable (which is, in fact, often served with fish).

Weird Roots

Our roots have started coming in white! These three weird sisters were the freaky superstars of last week's box.

In the knobby foreground is our old favorite, celeriac, which we've enjoyed in purees and soups, both good for a day foul or fair.

The green bulbous fellow in the middle is fennel, which we haven't cooked with before. You can eat both the bulbs and fronds. These folks suggest that you can eat it plain and raw with salt and olive oil, or use it in any dish as you would use celery, and offer lots of ideas and recipes besides.

And we argued about whether the root looming in the background was a beet or a turnip, but the Enterprise newsletter calls us all wrong. It's a watermelon radish, which "gets its name from its bright psychedelic pink and green interior, resembling the colors (but not the texture!) of a watermelon." They say to eat it like you would any radish, ignoring its disturbing size and albinism. (Here's a prettier picture of one; another picture and a pickle recipe; another incredibly enthusiastic fan.)

And speaking of disconcerting white root vegetables, I love it's not a parsnip, it's a carrot zombie.

P.S. Should you be in a similar rut of photographing but not cooking with your vegetables, you might enjoy Tiny Urban Kitchen's Eight Ways to Use Up Your Farm Share Vegetables.