Now don't get me wrong here! I made those Vanilla Squishy Kisses in order to eat them, and eat them I did. In fact, I ate so many that LBH came in from work one night and said "but you've been baking all week. Where are the cakes??"
However after all that fat and sugar I needed a little injection of freshness and a few vitamins to top up my supplies. I know that Fennel is not supposed to be available right now so I can only assume that I was able to get hold of two organic, British bulbs of the stuff due to the very mild Winter we have recently lived through.
It has also been a week of fish. Lots of fish in fact. Salmon, among other fish, is in season at the moment, and this is a new recipe of mine that I tried out earlier this week.
Topped Salmon with Baked Fennel
Serves Two
Take a generous handful of pine nuts, 12 black olives, half a red chili (de-seeded) and a large handful of flat leaf parsley and throw them in a blender. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil into the blender and whiz until it looks like the picture above and share two thirds of the mixture with the tops of two Salmon fillets. If you whiz the mixture for too short a time then the mixture will be too chunky to stay on top of the Salmon and if you whiz it too much it will be too much like liquid to stay on the Salmon. So, you can see the importance of getting this just right.
Slice one bulb of fennel into slices and place in a baking tray with the topped Salmon for approximately 20-25 mins at 160 degrees. As you can see in the picture I have placed some of the salmon topping onto the fennel also. This is important and will give the fennel a wonderful, additional taste as well as cutting down on the amount of olive oil you have to use due to the oil in the pine nuts seeping out during baking. If however it looks like the fennel is turning a little dry in the oven then drizzle with a small amount of olive oil.
Serve with brown rice or lentils.
