As I was slicing up a fennel bulb for the en papillote blog post, it occurred to me that there was going to be some left over for me to experiment with. Easy, healthy vegetable sides are always held at a premium around my house, so it was only natural to seek out the CSA box contents for the week and combine them with my fennel in order to create something hearty, delicious, and relatively simple. This took me all of eight minutes, and it was awesome...

While the olive oil was heating at medium/high heat in a saucepan, I sliced the fennel bulb like I did in this video, except the slices were slightly thicker.

The sliced fennel bulb was tossed into the pan, followed shortly by some quartered cherry tomatoes and sliced Castelvetrano olives (these are extremely mild olives). After about three minutes of basically ignoring the vegetables so they could develop some golden brown color, I tossed them around and let them sit a couple more minutes before deglazing with some of the olive juice from the jar. That evaporated pretty quickly (maybe 30 seconds) and I added a splash of white wine and let that reduce/evaporate/concentrate and create insanely good flavor for about a minute. Quick taste, little salt and pepper, taste again, and serve it up.

So in the span of about 7-8 minutes, this dish came out of nowhere and is now going to be a go-to any time I want a hearty side or even a vegetarian (vegan, actually) dinner option. If you take out the whole head of fennel yourself, you know it’s good...and I may or may not have done this.

Give it a try – it’s easy, it’s delicious, and it’s healthy. I’ll certainly be adding it to my regular rotation.

Notes:

1. For those of you who aren’t quite comfortable with fennel, please watch my video on how to break down a fennel bulb.
2.  I paid $1.49 for a huge fennel bulb at the farmer’s market. If you prepare this and eat the whole thing yourself, that’s pretty much a meal in and of itself.
3. The recipe can be found on the recipe page, and a printable PDF version of the recipe will pop up if you click any of the pictures above.
4. You can use kalamata olives in place of the Castelvetrano olives, but be cognizant of the fact that olives contain a good bit of salt (kalamatas moreso than Castelvetranos), so don’t add any salt until the very end of the cooking process (after you’ve tasted what you’re about to eat).
5. If you want to make it look nice, take a piece of fennel frond and place it right on top...you can eat it if you want, but it’s really only for curb appeal.