Fennel

THIS IS A GREEN-FREE SALAD where vegetables take center stage. The olive dressing makes this dish stand out, with fennel adding an extra crunch. Use as little or as much tuna as you wish; we prefer it as a background note.

WHY IT’S LIGHT A brothy base, lean, mild white fish, and only one tablespoon olive oil keep this dish healthier than heavier seafood stews and chowders. Drizzle just a little extra olive oil over each serving to make the most of the oil’s fruity flavor.

FLAVOR BOOSTER Fennel, tomato, and wine are common ingredients in Mediterranean cooking; in this recipe, they make a wonderful bed for chicken breast halves. Once the chicken is cooked through, the vegetables become a flavorful sauce to serve alongside.

This is a gratin made with a thin white sauce (béchamel), rather than one layered with milk, or with cream and broth. I use this method to cook other vegetables, such as cauliflower, wilted greens, or asparagus.

Fennel is among the most versatile of vegetables: it’s good whether it’s eaten raw in salads, or cooked in any number of ways, and I use it as an aromatic vegetable, often instead of celery, in mirepoix (diced carrot, onion, and celery) and other preparations. Cultivated fennel forms a compact, pale white bulb that is topped with fibrous green stalks and feathery leaves. The flavor is reminiscent of anise or licorice. Look for firm, undamaged bulbs that have no signs of drying or shrinking. The fronds should be fresh and vibrant. To prepare fennel, trim away the darker fibrous stalks and bottom end, and remove any outer layers that are tough or blemished. Fennel should be cut close to the time it is needed, as it will oxidize and brown over time. Cover cut fennel with a damp cloth to protect it. Many recipes ask you to remove the core, but I don’t find it necessary; on the contrary, I like the taste of the core and find it quite tender. The feathery dark green fennel leaves can be stripped from the stalks and chopped to use as a flavorful garnish. Wild fennel is an uncultivated variety of fennel that does not produce a bulb. Its leaves, flowers, pollen, and seeds are all very flavorful and useful in stuffings, marinades, garnishes, and sauces. If it grows in your region, forage for it in the wild.

Fennel makes a very delicate salad when sliced paper-thin. It can be difficult to cut the fennel very thin with a knife, so instead I reach for my plastic Japanese mandoline. But watch your fingertips and use the guard!

Fish and shellfish are superb grilled. The searing heat quickly seals in juices and delicately perfumes the flesh with smoke. Fish can be grilled as fillets, as steaks, or whole. Shellfish such as scallops and oysters can be grilled in the shell or shucked. Shrimp can be grilled peeled or unpeeled. All these are delicious seasoned with nothing more than salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon, but advance marinades of olive oil and herbs, tangy salsas such as the peach (page 231) or tomato (page 231), and Herb Butter (page 48), Béarnaise (page 229), or warm butter sauce (page 228) are also possibilities. A hot fire is best for everything except large whole fish. Use the hand test: you should be able to hold your hand an inch or two over the grill for no more than 2 seconds. The grill should be preheated, cleaned, and, most importantly, oiled, just before putting on the fish, to help keep it from sticking. Season fish fillets and steaks with salt and pepper and brush them with oil before putting to grill. Or marinate them with a combination of herbs, spices, citrus zest, and olive oil. Let fish sit in a marinade for at least an hour to allow the flavors to penetrate. An average fillet about an inch thick will take 6 to 8 minutes to cook. If the skin has been left on (it gets crispy and delicious cooked on a grill), place the fillet skin side down and cook it mostly on the skin side. Check for doneness after about 6 minutes, and turn at the last minute to sear the other side. A fillet without the skin should be cooked 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Rotate after about 2 minutes to make crosshatched grill marks. Check for doneness after about 6 minutes, and turn at the last minute to sear the other side. To test, press on the flesh with your finger or a spatula, or probe the flesh with a knife. The fish is done when the meat is just set and slightly firm to the touch but still moist. Fish such as salmon and tuna are delicious seared on the outside and very rare inside, still shiny and translucent. Remember that the fish will continue to cook after it is taken off the grill. If cooked for too long, fish can become quite dry. A fish steak is a cross-section at least 1 inch thick that contains some backbone and is surrounded by the skin. Grill the same way as a skinless fillet, but turn it after 5 minutes and check for doneness after 8. Check by feel or by cutting into the flesh near the backbone to see inside. The flesh should separate easily from the bones but still be quite moist. A whole fish should be scaled and gutted; any fishmonger will do this. Cook the fish whole and unboned, with its head on, if possible; the fish will be more succulent. Season well with salt and pepper or marinate as described above, turning the fish now and then in the marinade. Cook smaller fish like anchovies and sardines over a hot fire, threaded on skewers for easy turning. (I love fresh anchovies marinated with a little chopped mint and grilled over a searing hot fire.) Trim off the fins and the tail-ends of larger fish (kitchen shears make short work of this chore). The belly cavity can be stuffed with lemon slices and herbs. Because they take much longer to cook, big fish need a medium-hot fire. To turn over a big fish on the grill, gently roll it as often as necessary to keep the skin from burning. Measure the fish at its thickest point and allow about 10 minutes per inch. A good friend of mine catches big fish, cleans and scales them, and grills them wrapped entirely in fennel fronds or herb branches, or sometimes in tender leafing branches from his lemon tree, tied in place with wet string. This overcoat of greenery steams and perfumes the fish and they taste divine. Whole fish are done when the flesh easily separates from the bone. If tied up in greenery, unwrap it, and gently separate the fillets from the central backbone, picking out any rib bones that come off with the fillets. Shucked scallops, oysters, squid, and shrimp (peeled or ...

Brunch is a funny meal; many of the main dishes are sweet enough to make dessert seem almost redundant. That’s why I like to serve this dish, which is bright and fresh from the citrus with a hint of licorice from the fennel. It bridges the gap between salad and dessert, ending the meal on a sweet but not heavy note.

Of all the recipes I’ve done for Giada at Home on TV, this one has been the biggest hit with both viewers and my crew. I’ve always said that if you want to get kids (and picky adults) to eat something, bake it with marinara and cheese and they’ll be demanding seconds. You’ll be happy because they’re eating lots of healthy veggies, they’ll be happy because it tastes awesome, and as an added bonus, your kitchen will smell fantastic, too. Use any vegetable that you love or have on hand in this dish; it’s very versatile.

Fritto misto means mixed fry, and in Italy, where it is a great way to use up odds and ends from the kitchen, it might contain meat, cheese, fish—anything that can be breaded and fried (and what can’t, really?). My favorite part of any fritto misto is always the veggies, and this version is nothing but. It has the added surprise of fried garbanzos, which get crunchy on the outside and creamy within, and lemon slices, which are crispy and delicious.

You always need a simple, elegant green salad in your repertoire. What I love are the buttery and cheesy crostini, so you get your healthy, leafy vegetable with a little indulgence.

Cutlets cooked à la milanese—breaded in a cheesy crumb coating and pan-fried until crisp—are popular in every part of Italy (and here, for that matter!). They are usually made with veal, but my little aunt Carolyna wanted something she could serve her college friends, many of whom don’t eat veal. So I substituted chicken for the veal and added fennel to the quick pan sauce in this dish I devised for her; it is quite light and fresh-tasting, yet still true to the original.

Fennel remains exotic enough to be a treat for many people, and this simple preparation simply elevates its stature a bit. Trim and discard the hard, hollow stalks that jut out from the top of the bulb; if you get your hands on a bulb with its fronds still attached, roughly chop them and add them to the hot oil with the garlic.

This is an almost universal technique for vegetables, an honest, simple gratin with a topping of just a couple of ingredients. Since one of them is rich, flavorful blue cheese, butter isn’t even included. My vegetable of choice here is fennel—an underappreciated and almost always available bulb—but you could put this topping on almost any vegetable. For the cheese, you can use Gorgonzola, the soft Italian cheese; bleu d’Auvergne, a mild cheese from France; Maytag blue, the premier domestic variety; Stilton, the classic English blue; or Roquefort, which is made from sheep’s milk. All are good, but my preferences are for the stronger cheeses, such as Roquefort and Maytag.

It isn’t often you can combine a few winter staples and create a novel, fresh-tasting dish that is easily varied, stands on its own, or forms the base for a variety of other foods. Yet a simple mélange of fennel and orange does all of these things and without a lot of effort. Take some slices of boneless pork, for example, marinate them briefly in olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper, pan-roast them, then serve them on a bed of the compote: the mingled juices are sheer delight. (I’ve presented the recipe that way here, but it is easy to cook the fennel-orange combination on its own.) Similarly, the compote works nicely as a bed for simple roasted cod, sautéed duck breast, and grilled chicken. There isn’t much technique to speak of here; you’ll know the dish is done when the orange juice bubbles become scarce. Just be sure not to cook the compote entirely dry; the orange juice sauce is a nice touch.

Although this minimalist but infinitely variable technique of herb-coating salmon is about as straightforward as can be, allowing the fillets to sit for a while after coating will encourage the fragrant seasonings to permeate the flesh of the fish; try fifteen minutes or so at room temperature or up to 24 hours in the refrigerator.

Meatballs are one comfort food trend among many, all of which seem to have been with us since the nineties for no obvious reason. Maybe we've all gotten so very tired of politics and obstructionists and pundits and sign-wavers and bad times and bank bailouts and... OK, comfort foods aren't going away any time soon. So try this Greek-inspired dish, the flavors based on those from the eastern part of the Mediterranean.

A crunchy mixed vegetable salad given a twist by the addition of bread. Feel free to improvise with whatever is in your garden or kitchen. The key to this salad is not the choice of vegetables but slicing them as thinly as possible. Use a mandoline if you have one.