Roasted Fennel Recipe with Cucumber Mint Sauce

I discovered the wonderful vegetable fennel a year or two back. I always knew of it as the spice that my mom used in her Indian cooking, and as the seed that you chewed after eating to help your food digest well. And quite frankly, I thought it was disgusting. Then, while at my local grocery store, I stumbled upon this beautiful vegetable and thought, hmm, let me see what this is all about.

Needless to say, I’ve fallen in love with it and it’s now a staple in my refrigerator. I basically use it any and everywhere I can.

Fennel is a great little vegetable, especially for all of our pitta friends out there. Super cooling in nature, fennel is also packed with antioxidants, making it good for our rasa and rakta dhatus, or lymph and blood systems.

From an Ayurvedic standpoint, fennel is desirable because it works as a pacan—or helps post-digestion.

Pair it with a cucumber mint sauce, and try this for your next dinner. 

Ingredients:

For the slaw

• 1 fennel bulb
• 2 teaspoons ghee

For the sauce

• ½ cucumber, peeled and diced
• 4–5 sprigs mint, minced
• 3 tablespoons hemp oil
• 1 ½ limes squeezed
• ¼ teaspoon mineral salt
• ½ teaspoon black pepper

Directions:

Cut your fennel bulb in half and roast in the oven for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees, depending on the size of your bulb.

In the meantime, take all the ingredients for the sauce and blend them together in a blender until you get a nice creamy consistency. 

Once your fennel is roasted, take it out of the oven. Melt the ghee in a hot pan on the stove, then add the fennel and sear it on all sides. 

When it’s a nicely charred, remove it from the pan and serve with your favorite grain (I used brown rice). Feel free to add whatever greens you would like to this dish.

Pour the sauce all over and enjoy!