a quick midweek supper: sausage and roasted fennel stew

sausage and roasted fennel stew

For me flattery is when someone requests one of my recipes or meals. It makes me absurdly happy. So last weekend's request for my Sunday lunch accompaniment of roasted fennel stew had me doing a little dance of glee on the inside. For years I was convinced that fennel was an acquired taste; now that I have decided that fennel is a taste that I have acquired it gives me a lot of pleasure that I can introduce friends to the flavours I have started to enjoy and the fact that they seem to like these flavours too is a definite bonus!

So I made the roasted fennel and tomato stew again to go with last Sunday's roast chicken. I had amended the recipe a little by dry-roasting a scattering of fennel seeds and coriander seeds, then whizzing them up in the blender and adding to the vegetables. These ground spices seemed to give the stew even more zest and zing and worked beautifully with my pomegranate roasted chicken.

There were some leftovers. Frankly, there always are - whether by design or because sometimes I just overdo things. I suspect though that the combination of a few grilled wild boar sausages that I had bought from Salvino, my local Italian deli, combined with the leftover roasted fennel and tomato stew which I served with a few wild leek potato cakes might become a firm fixture on the menu. The porky sausages had a hint of fennel and the sweet fruitiness of red wine which worked perfectly with my veg, all mopped up with some crisp garlicky potato cakes.