Vegetarian Curry with Carrots & Roasted Fennel
So apparently the only thing that I make when I'm taking photos is a curry, which means that plenty of you may be bored of them at this point. All I can say is that it was inspired by a recent couples cooking class me & JaBootay took at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, where we got schooled in an array of Indian dishes. I promptly butchered the carrot recipe they used , and well, my fennel was awful. I'm hoping that I can lay out what I did and folks can point out where I went wrong.
The curry came out fine. I used this recipe minus the coconut milk, kidney beans and lentils to focus more on zucchini and potatoes. It worked pretty well. It was hearty without being too spicy. It was also the only pleasant thing I tasted that night, so I might be biased,
The carrots looked great but tasted like burnt. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe a hint of ginger. I think I let them sit too long while I was hoping for the fennel to get better. It didn't. I even tried to do a wine reduction to change the burnt to more of an earthy, herby taste but no dice.
...and the damn fennel. I cut it just like Barbara Kafka said, put it in a roasting dish with a leek, a lot of garlic and some olive oil. But it came out of the oven almost gamy, unpleasant and painful to put in front of guests. If anyone has ever used fennel for good instead of evil, please let me know in the comments.
so I was a part of this "fiasco" I think it was a noble attempt to try something new. I am hesitant to give all the dishes specific criticism. It should be noted that the meal was made in less then 40 minutes which is a record time for a "dave" curry and for side dishes. I have had Dave's curries and adventure dishes before and they have come out good. I think that if he had more time to prepare each dish they would have come out better. Over all Curry B-, Carrots C, Fennel F+. I dont think fennel should be a dish by itself! Since this dish I have added fennel to my do not eat/order list.
ReplyDeletei made fennel once... i think i steamed it... i enjoyed it but my dinner guest did not... his fault for not liking anise flavored anything, my fault for forgetting that about him...
ReplyDeleteha, came back to this post because of the "so you might like" widget at the bottom of denise's dish. even remembering this dish is painful, it was so awful.
ReplyDeletebad fennel, bad.