Recently I’ve been experimenting with adding fennel to my dishes. I’d seen it in the shops countless times, but never really knew what to do with it. Finally, I decided to just buy some and find out what happened. This is a nice, comforting dish for autumn/winter and has the added bonus of being quick and easy enough to make in the evening after a long day at work. This amount serves 3-4 (me, Jan plus some leftovers for me to take to work for lunch, but Jan eats more than I do – it would be enough for 4 of me).
Ingredients:
Olive oil for frying
1 clove garlic
500g pork sausages (Germany residents: I would normally buy “grobe Bratwurst” but the supermarket didn’t have those this time)
1 fennel bulb
Any small pasta (I like penne, but fusilli or farfalle would also work)
1 400g tin of tomatoes
Cheese (one with a fairly strong taste, like Cheddar or Bergkäse)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C (roughly 390°F). Heat some olive oil in a pan.
2. While the olive oil is heating, chop the sausages into bite-sized chunks. Once the oil is hot, crush in the garlic clove and fry for about a minute before adding the sausages.
3. While the sausages are cooking (stir them once in a while so they cook on all sides), chop the fennel into chunks. Once the sausages are mostly brown, add the fennel to the pan. Stir occasionally.
4. Meanwhile, cook the pasta until it’s just short of being ready (with mine, that took 8 minutes). Drain the pasta then add it to the frying pan with the sausages/fennel.
5. Add a tin of tomatoes to the frying pan, stir everything together and season to taste with salt and pepper, then pour the entire mixture into an oven-proof bowl.
6. Grate cheese all over the top – how much is up to you – and place in the oven until the cheese has all melted. This will take about 20-30 minutes, depending on your oven and exactly how melted you like your cheese.
And there you have it – meaty, cheesy, comforting goodness… and it’s even pretty healthy (as long as you didn’t go too overboard on the cheese). If you wanted, you could add extra vegetables (leek might be nice), replace the sausages with a tin of tuna or, for a vegetarian version, use aubergine or tofu in place of the sausages. It’s entirely up to you!
Confuzzledom 
Yummy in my tummy 🙂
I thought you might like this one, Miss Wurst 😉
I might even try to make it 🙂 Search term today – expat = warmduscher 🙂
Haha, they’re probably right to be fair. I’m definitely a Warmduscher (possibly in both senses of the word 😛 )
Me too 🙂 Even when it’s boiling outside, I still don’t take a completely cold shower!
I’ve always liked fennel but I keep forgetting to use it in cooking, mainly because it’s stuck in my head that it only goes with fish. Will have to try it with something else soon!
The first time I had it was with fish, but as that was the only time I’d tried it up to now I had no particular associations.
We had it in mince & veg the other day (what the Scottish call “stovies”). It worked really well.
What on earth is fennel? This dish looks lovely! Must try it!
I think most people know fennel better in the form of seeds. You know when you go to an Indian restaurant they give you a little bowl of seeds after the meal? The ones that taste of aniseed are fennel.
The bulb looks a bit like a peeled onion, but it has tubes coming up off and leaves attached to the tubes (my description is crap!). It smells really aniseedy when you’re cutting it up, but I find the taste of aniseed fairly mild – at least when it’s cooked. I haven’t tried it raw.
The Germans drink fennel tea for stomach problems (gas, constipation, to help with digestion) and period pains. They use teas for EVERYTHING here though!
Sounds delish
It was! Looking forward to having the leftovers for today’s lunch.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never cooked with fennel, but this looks so tasty, I think I need to try it.
It tastes anniseedy – it goes really well with the sausages.
Mmm this sounds tasty for an easy dinner, and leftovers for lunch! I love making enough for leftovers the next day.
I see fennel all the time in shops and I’ve yet to buy. We had the same experience with aubergine, turns out we like aubergine, so we might have the same luck with fennel 🙂
We never had aubergine at home ( dad doesn’t eat it),but I randomly decided to try it at some point and now I buy it all the time. Turns out I love it!
Fennel has an aniseedy kind of flavour, so if you like aniseed you’ll probably like fennel as well.
Very creative! I’d never have thought to put fennel in a sausage pasta dish! Sam is really in to drinking fennel tea right now. xx
LOL, really? I thought only Germans drank such weird things. Supposedly fennel is good for stomach problems and period pain. Every tea MUST be good for something… you can’t possibly just drink tea because you like it 😉
Fennel! A herb I don’t think I have ever actually used?! Must remedy that!
I hadn’t either until recently. It’s nice though.