Today’s secret ingredient in Chez Venza……Fennel!
Fennel is kind of a weird vegetable. It’s sort of like an onion, sort of like celery, and tastes a little bit like licorice. It’s not a powerful flavor, but there is nothing else quite like it that you could use as a substitute. It also confuses the grocery store clerk when you buy one, so you can have a little fun at the grocery store. It also looks funky!
We were looking for an easy weeknight meal and came across Curry Dusted Scallops with Fennel-Apple Broth in Bon Appetit magazine (New food lit crush – totally got a subscription). Uh, yeah.. doesn’t that sound easy? Well, it mostly is!
We used to be afraid of cooking scallops, but it’s actually pretty easy. It makes it seem like you’ve made something really fancy for dinner when you really didn’t have to do that much.
Other fun ingredients include apple, shallot, apple cider, apple vinegar, and curry powder. You can use any curry powder that you like. Fun fact: “curry” just means a mixture of spices and is not a defined set of spices. And according to Iron Chef, no self-respecting Indian would ever use a pre-mixed curry powder (we won’t tell if you won’t).
So we started with making the apple-fennel broth. The saucepan includes the fronds of the fennel (that is the green leafy part), a chopped up apple, shallots, and apple cider. This reduces until the cider absorbs up all the flavor from the shallot and fennel fronds. We then strained out the solids so that we were left with a flavorful broth. This is probably the first homemade, recipe specific broth we’ve ever made. Twas very tasty
A scallop is a type of mollusk that lives in a seashell. You’ve probably seen a scallop shell a million times and never thought about before (but here’s a link to a picture if you need a visual). Scallops tend to have a little “foot” where it attaches to the shell. They tell you to remove that foot before cooking (although if you forget to do this step I don’t think it’s the end of the world).
The scallops get dipped in curry powder on both sides and then into the skillet they go! They cook for about 2 minutes on each side and then they’re basically done. We put them in the oven on low-heat while we cooked the sauce so that they would stay warm. Despite the age of the curry powder, and the relatively low amount used… the house smelled of curry for a while.
The fennel bulb is chopped up and then put into the same skillet that had the scallops (so that it can pick up some of that curry flavor). We also added another chopped up apple and let it cook for a few minutes until softened. Then we added the cider broth that we had made earlier. We finished it off with a little more curry powder, a tiny bit of apple cider vinegar, salt, and pepper. Then it’s time to assemble!
Doesn’t it look delicious? We topped it with some green onions for color. Fancy enough for a restaurant, but easy enough to make on a Tuesday.
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