For my Mother’s birthday this year I decided to cook a meal for her. This was one of the first recipes I thought of when I started forming a menu. The first time I heard of it was while watching Giada De Laurentiis on the Food Channel. I tend to collect recipes from food shows and this one looked and sounded so good that I stored it in my recipe note book to make as soon as I could. So naturally when I came across it again I decided that my mother’s birthday would be a wonderful time to make it.

Fennel: Florence fennel, also called finocchio, is cultivated throughout the Mediterranean and in the United States. It has a broad, bulbous base that’s treated like a vegetable. Both the base and stems can be eaten raw in salads or cooked in a variety of methods such as braising, sautéing or in soups. The fragrant, graceful greenery can be used as a garnish or snipped like dill and used for a last-minute flavor enhancer. –Copyright (c) 1995 by Barron’s Educational Series, from The New Food Lover’s Companion, Second Edition, by Sharon Tyler Herbst

Never having actually cooked with Fennel (discounting Fennel Seeds of course), I had a hard time finding it in the grocery store I shop at on a regular basis. This called for a trip to Whole Foods. If we could not find it there then I would have to make a trip to Central Market. Thankfully, it did not come to that.

One of the first things I noticed while working with Fennel was the strong licorice scent. As Licorice is one of the few flavors that I am not overly fond of I was afraid that it might be overpowering in the salad. I needn’t have worried. I believe the roasting process and the brown sugar served to cut the strong licorice flavor. At the end of dinner we actually picked through the salad to eat the remaining fennel.

There were very few things I would do differently when it comes to the preparation of this salad. I recommend roasting the fennel on its own for the first 10 minutes then adding the pancetta towards the end. This would be to ensure a nice caramelized coloring of the pancetta instead of a something that looks burned (though it tasted just as good as the rest) especially if the slices of pancetta you are working with are fairly thin.

Timing is everything for this salad. You want to be able to serve the salad while the pancetta and fennel are still warm (though it tastes wonderful cooled as well) which makes things tricky when you have other dishes to finish and want to serve it well before the main course.

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