Fennel and Spinach

My Produce Items: Fennel, Spinach, Strawberries

Round 1: Sauteed Fennel and Spinach Steak

chopped up fennel bulb

spinach

2 tablespoons of olive oil

1/2 teaspoon of seasoning salt

1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon of chives

2 steaks for frying

In a frying pan, heat up the olive oil. Saute the fennel and spinach in the oil. Sprinkle seasoning salt (I use Penzeys 4S special seasoning salt), garlic powder and chives over top. Cook until spinach and fennel have a good color, around 10 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.

Fry steaks in the same pan lightly sprinkling them with seasoning salt if desired (the steaks will pick up the flavoring from the pan). Cook steaks to your desired liking (I like mine medium).

Serve fennel spinach with steak.

Serves 2

Final Verdict: Delicious!

This dish was excellent. I never cooked fennel before but decided to use it like an onion. It worked out great. All the flavors went together really well especially with the steak. I'm glad I tried this because it's hard for me to find recipes I like for spinach and this one was so good. I was originally going to cook salmon with the fennel spinach, but I feel like this should go with red meat. The steak was a great choice.

Round 2: Fennel, Spinach and Strawberry Salad

chopped up strawberries

spinach

lettuce

fennel leaves

1/4 cup of balsamic vinaigrette dressing

Toss everything together until all ingredients are evenly dispersed and coated with salad dressing and serve.

Serves 3-5

Final Verdict: Good

The leaves of the fennel taste like liquorice. I thought that combined with the strawberries and vinaigrette dressing would be a great combination. The salad was very good, however the fennel was barely noticeable in flavor. The leaves of the fennel actually had an unpleasant texture in the salad which stuck to my teeth and made the salad kind of grainy. I ended up pushing some of it off to the side. Perhaps I used too much. The strawberries were sweet and tasty. You can always tell the difference between farm fresh strawberries and supermarket bought. All in all it was a really good salad. Next time I'll try cooking the fennel leaves first to soften them up and use less of them.