Grilled Fennel

This grilled fennel turned out absolutely amazing and was very simple to make. I got the idea from a dish I tried recently at a local restaurant, Pizzeria Delfina, but honestly did not believe my version would be anywhere near as awesome. To my surprise, it was pretty darn close! Needless to say I am super proud of myself for this one and I hope I can convince you to try it.

Fennel is a rather unique vegetable that looks like a cross between celery and an onion, but tastes like neither. The flavor resembles anise or black liquorish when raw (a taste I still really struggle with), but takes on a sweeter, more herbal flavor when cooked. I have always been a fan of cooked fennel, despite my aversion to raw preparations. But I had no idea how far this misunderstood vegetable could be elevated by throwing it on the grill.

Don’t have a grill, you say? Awesome, neither do I. Backyards aren’t exactly standard in city apartments. For this recipe I used an apartment-friendly alternative to an outdoor grill, the humble grill pan.

A grill pan is special because it features raised ridges that can leave those wonderful, coveted grill marks on your food. Grill marks not only give your food a lovely appearance, they also add a unique flavor because sugars and fats caramelize where ever they come in contact with the hot pan. This effect cannot be achieved in a standard fry pan and is a delicious alternative for cooking meats, fish and most vegetables.

My favorite grill pan (also the favorite of Cook’s Illustrated) is only about $30, far cheaper than a traditional outdoor grill or indoor electric grill. You can buy it here by clicking the image above or find it in the Kitchen Gear Accessories section of the Summer Tomato Shop.

Feel free to use which ever grilling method is easiest for you.

When picking out your fennel, I recommend using several baby fennel bulbs rather than one large one (hint: baby fennels are abundant in CA farmers markets right now). Baby fennel is more tender because it does not have a large, hard inner core like full-sized fennel. This feature will make your life a lot easier if you try this recipe.

I purchased Lisbon lemon olive oil this past weekend from Stonehouse Olive Oil at the Ferry Building in San Francisco. You can find lemon oil at specialty grocery stores, and it is a wonderful ingredient. I definitely think lemon oil is worth the investment if you enjoy cooking, but my guess is that for some of you fancy olive oil may be pushing the limits of your sense of adventure. If you prefer, you can make due with extra virgin olive oil and a Meyer (or regular) lemon.

This is a side dish. I paired mine with asparagus ravioli and sorrel.

Grilled Fennel with Lemon Oil

Ingredients:

• Fennel
• Extra virgin olive oil
• Lemon olive oil (or 1/2 Meyer lemon juice and zest)
• Sea salt
• Fresh Italian parsley, chopped

If you are using baby fennel, cut off the green stems and the very bottom of the root (but not so much that the layers have nothing to attach to). Then cut the fennel in half lengthwise, and then again into 4-6 bite-sized wedges.

The goal is to get your fennel into manageable chunks, which means (ideally) all the layers would still be attached at the bottom. This is much more difficult if you have removed the core. In my experiment (I made the mistake of buying large fennel) I removed the core on one half before cooking and left the other half with the core in while cooking. It was easier to get the fennel to cook evenly on the half where the core was still attached. You can remove the core after cooking if it is still tough.

If you are using a large fennel bulb simply trim off the stems, slice off the bottom and cut the bulb in half lengthwise. Cut each half into even-sized wedges, about 0.5 inch thick.

For an outdoor grill, simply brush your fennel wedges with olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt and grill until soft and tender, turning occasionally.

For a grill pan, heat the pan on medium high heat for 3-5 minutes. Lightly coat fennel in olive oil and sea salt (use a bowl and stir). When the pan is hot, add 1-2 tbsp olive oil and gently swirl it in the pan so it coats the surface. Place fennel in a single layer on the hot grill, lower the heat to medium and cook until translucent, tender and slightly browned, turning occasionally. For me this took about 10 minutes. I recommend using tongs with nylon heads to turn your fennel in the pan.

Your fennel should have grill marks and be caramelized in places. I suggest exercising patience and allowing fennel to become extremely tender, but you can choose your desired crunchiness. Remove the fastest cooking fennel pieces from the grill when they are done and place them in a bowl.

When all the fennel is finished cooking, drizzle it lightly with lemon oil (or juice and zest) and sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley. Adjust salt and zest if necessary.

Have you tried grilling fennel?

Tags: extra virgin olive oil, fennel, Ferry Building, grill, grill pan, lemon oil, Meyer lemon, San Francisco, Stonehouse Olive Oil

Happy Monday everyone!

Before we get to the fun stuff, there are a few technical things we need to discuss:

1. Older feed subscriptions using Google Reader and iGoogle appear to be broken. Even though my first post from Summer Tomato went out to all subscribers without a problem, all Google feed readers (about 40% of you use these, by my calculations) seem to have reverted back to my old (broken) blog feed address. Thus new posts are not going out to you.

Google FAIL.

I am doing my best to resolve this, but in the meantime the easiest solution is to re-subscribe to the working Summer Tomato RSS feed. You can do that by clicking here. If you do not know what I’m talking about and your subscription is working without a problem, don’t worry about it.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

2. Tell me which advertisements you hate. In case you haven’t noticed, I care a lot about your health. But I also want this blog to be successful so that I can continue spending as much time on it as I do. One of the things that keeps this blog up and running are the Google advertisements you find throughout the site (also donations and purchases from my Amazon shop).

I do my best to keep ads that conflict with my message (e.g. diet pills, weight loss cures scams, etc.) off this blog, but it requires constant filtering on my part. I am not notified before an ad appears, but if I see one on my blog that I do not like I ask Google to remove it and it usually goes away in an hour or two.

Since I am not browsing my website 24 hrs a day, my vigilance will occasionally be insufficient and bothersome ads may appear. If you encounter ads that are particularly annoying to you, please let me know which ones and I will take care of them as quickly as I can. I am also interested in hearing your opinions on ads in general. E.g. Do you prefer the picture/flash ads or standard text link ads?

The advertisements should be a benefit to you, offering products you might actually be interested in. Please consider supporting our honest sponsors by visiting their websites.

I will be exploring new advertising options in the future when things are more settled here. Thanks for your patience.

Extra thanks to those of you who have provided feedback so far

xoxox

Darya

Tags: advertisements, feeds, Google, iGoogle, problems, RSS, subscriptions, techical

Chioggia Radicchio

I know, this is kind of mean. Many of you have expressed your frustrations about the shabbiness or nonexistentness of your own local farmers markets. But I can’t help but brag about all the great spring veggie action we have going on here in San Francisco. Try to think of it as inspiration for what you have to look forward to….

Sorrel

What I am most excited about today is that my bounty is markedly different from what I have been buying all winter. And it is all the more wonderful because it is easily 75 degrees and gorgeous today. (Don’t be too jealous of this, because one of the worst things about living in San Francisco is summertime fog–truly sunny days are rare).

At the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market a few different vendors were selling sorrel today, so I bought some from Capay organics. Sorrel is interesting because its flavor puts it somewhere between a vegetable and an herb. When it is older it becomes more acidic and has an almost lemon-like flavor. Younger it is more mild and tastes closer to spinach. I am thinking about tossing mine up with some grilled fennel and lemon scented oil. I had a similar dish (minus the sorrel) recently at Pizzeria Delfina, and it was incredible.

Flowering Arugula

Last weekend on the KCRW podcast, Good Food, there was a wonderful segment about arugula flowers at the Santa Monica Farmers Market, so I had to buy those this week too.

Other 2009 first purchases today were the small Mediterranean style cucumbers and Belgian endive from Madison Growers. (Maybe I will may actually make a salad this weekend?) The kumquats were also finally sweet enough to buy.

Mediterranean Cucumbers

Last but not least, Zuckerman’s is again offering their famous asparagus ravioli and I bought some. They recommended I prepare it with just olive oil and some grated Parmesan cheese, but I think I have had enough of taking serving suggestions from farmers for a couple weeks. I have a few of my own tricks I am excited to try on this springtime treat (hint: another excuse to use the lemon oil I bought today). I will certainly keep you posted.

Today’s Purchases:

Belgian Endives

• Sorrel (Capay Organics)
• Belgian endive (Madison Growers)
• Mediterranean cucumbers (Madison Growers)
• Arugula flowers (Marin Root Farm)
• Assorted kales (Marin Root Farm)
• Fennel (Chue’s Farm)
• Baby leeks (Dirty Girl Produce)
• Cioggia radicchio (Dirty Girl Produce)
• Carrots (Star Route Farms)
• Asparagus ravioli (Zuckerman’s Farm)
• Kiwi (Four Sisters Farms)
• Heirloom navel oranges (Bernard Ranches)
• Kumquats (Bernard Ranches)
• Rio red grapefruit (Hamada Farms)
• tofu (Hodo Soy)
• Lisbon lemon olive oil (Stonehouse Olive Oil)
• House blend olive oil (Stonehouse Olive Oil)

What are you most jealous of?

Tags: cucumber, endive, Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, lemon oil, Pizzeria Delfina, sorrel

Garlic

People often say that garlic has medicinal properties. Some claim it lowers blood pressure, others swear it lowers cholesterol or reduces clotting, and some even suggest it protects against cancer. I have also heard that garlic is “healthier” 10-15 minutes after it has been crushed or minced. Is any of this true?

The Science of Single Foods

As someone who regularly reads the scientific literature on the health benefits of food I can assure you that this is not an easy question to answer. The problem is that the effect of any single food on human health is likely to be small at best, and small effects are very difficult to detect with reliability. Studies must be incredibly well-designed in order to contribute anything of value to our understanding of how a food works in the human body. Also, many studies must be taken together in context for the data to be evaluated properly.

I have been researching this garlic question on and off for months and feel only slightly more confident today than I did when I started. To summarize, there are a good number of studies addressing the health value of garlic, but very very few of them are well-designed and published in reputable journals. The problem with having a large number of poor-quality studies is that results are often conflicting and difficult to interpret. Thus, when another scientist comes in to do a meta-analysis (pooling data from many studies and re-analyzing it for stronger statistics) the findings are usually inconclusive.

However, inconclusive findings do not enable me (or anyone) to say there is no benefit. What I can say is that more research is needed and if there is a benefit it is likely to be small. (How unsatisfying is that?!). But personally I would still recommend eating garlic for health. Why?

Small Benefits Are Important

Although we cannot say exactly why garlic is good for you, it is almost certainly not bad for you. Moreover, although it is difficult to attribute a particular health benefit to a single food, we do know that people who eat the most vegetables live longer and have lower rates of pretty much every disease.

Many nutrition scientists are beginning to suspect that the benefit of foods like garlic are primarily relevant in the context of a whole diet and cannot be evaluated independently. This means that it is less important that the individual studies I mentioned earlier are inconclusive, because they are likely not sensitive enough to evaluate the complex interactions of whole foods and food combinations on human physiology.

The Best Reason To Eat Garlic

As I mentioned above, the most important thing you can do for your health is eat a diverse diet based on vegetables and other plants. Garlic is an amazing ingredient that imparts a unique and wonderful taste to foods. If you like garlic and it encourages you to eat your vegetables, then it’s good for you!

If it makes you feel slightly better knowing that it may help your heart or reduce inflammation, that’s awesome but less important.

What About The Crush?

If you do hope garlic can add to your health, is there any benefit in crushing it early? Probably.

Scientists have long suspected that the active ingredient in garlic is a substance called allicin. A recent study from Queen’s University showed that it is actually a decomposition product of allicin that has the most potent antioxidant activity.

Interestingly, allicin is created from an enzyme called alliinase that is not released from plant cells until they are damaged. Alliinase is what gives garlic (and onions) their strong odor and is thought to be a self-defense mechanism for these plants. When garlic is crushed, alliinase becomes active and begins creating allicin. As allicin is created and breaks down, the antioxidant potential of garlic is dramatically increased. Optimal antioxidant levels are created about 10 minutes after garlic is crushed.

It has not yet been shown that this increased antioxidant activity is a benefit to humans, but the principle is compelling enough to try to remember to crush your garlic a little early. If you are anything like me though, this feat is almost impossible. Apparently garlic hasn’t done that much for my memory!

What are your favorite reasons to eat garlic?

Tags: allicin, alliinase, crushed garlic, garlic, minced garlic

This is the official launch of Summer Tomato! Welcome!

Summer Tomato is an upgrade of the blog Thought for Food I have been running on Google’s Blogger for the past 9 months. While Blogger was a fantastic place for me to get started, its limitations could sometimes detract from the readers’ experience. And because my readers deserve the best, I have created Summer Tomato!

If you are a Thought for Food loyalist, never fear. All the old posts and comments from summertomato.blogspot.com have been moved here safe and sound. My main goal for this site was not to start from scratch but to make it easier to navigate and find what you’re looking for.

Here are some new features at Summer Tomato:

• Categories One of the biggest factors in my decision to migrate to the Wordpress platform was the ability to sort posts into categories. Because of how I approach food and health, my articles can range from science to recipes to politics. You can now navigate all Summer Tomato categories using the colorful menu at the top of the page.
• About I finally have an About page! Everything you’ve always wanted to know about me or this blog can be found there. Navigation options can be found on the About page sidebar.
• Healthstyle I am sick and tired of the word diet and am now using the word Healthstyle to describe healthy eating. You can read all about it here.
• Ask Me People have lots of questions about health and nutrition and I love to answer them! There is now a section of this blog where you can post questions about health and nutrition, and I will do my best to address them in a future article. I think this could be really fun, and I hope you participate. For now it is just an experiment, so we will see how it works out.
• Contact Form Summer Tomato has an official form if you would like to contact me personally. This is a perfect place to address private inquiries and suggestions.
• Shop Summer Tomato has a new store powered by Amazon! I am really excited about this feature because Amazon usually has the best prices on the internet and now I can easily point you to my favorite books, kitchen gadgets and other fun foodie things and you can make purchases directly from within this site. At the Summer Tomato store you can find everything you need for learning about food, health and cooking. You can stock a new kitchen, take your Healthstyle on the road or upgrade to the coolest toys. Many of the products also feature my personal reviews and I will continue to update these whenever possible. Any purchases you make through the 

I encourage you to explore the new Summer Tomato site and let me know what you think. All suggestions are welcome and I will do my best to reply to any comments or questions you may have.

If you currently subscribe to the Thought for Food email or RSS feeds, your subscription should continue to work with Summer Tomato. If it does not, please contact me as soon as possible so I can fix it. Also, if you are currently linking this blog from another website, it would be great if you could update your link to SummerTomato.com.

This site will continue to evolve over time and I hope that the changes reflect the needs of the readers. If you like this blog, please share it with your friends and family. Summer Tomato can only be as strong as the community we build together.

Thanks to everyone who has already helped make Summer Tomato possible, I couldn’t have done it without you.

xoxoxo

Darya

Tags: welcome