Fennel, Potato and White Bean Soup

I admit, when we started planting our garden in the spring we may have been a little over ambitious.

Now of some vegetables we have more than we can ever eat.

Fennel is one of those vegetables.

Don't get me wrong, I love fennel! But we have like kilos of it.

So I desperately needed to find a recipe with lots and lots of fennel in it.

That is just one of the probably 5-7 baskets of this year's fennel harvest...

And I found this wonderful summery soup in "Casa Moro - The Second Cookbook" by Sam & Sam Clark of restaurant Moro in London.

Yes, another one from this book. You should get it. It's a fantastic cook book with soo many delicous recipes!

What you need:

170g dried white beans

4 tbsp olive oil

4-5 fennel bulbs (approx. 500g total), finely diced

2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced

1 tsp fennel seeds (optional)

3 medium waxy potatoes (approx. 350g), peeled, diced and lightly salted

1 litre bean liquid and/or water or chicken stock

about 40 threads of saffron, infused in 2 tbsp boiling water

2 tbsp chopped fresh fennel leaves

sea salt and pepper

the fennel, potato and bean soup with homemade flatbread and hummus.

Directions:

Soak the white beans overnight, then drain, cover with generously with fresh water and bring to the boil. Simmer for about 1-1.5 hours, until soft, then drain, reserving the cooking liquid.

In another pan, heat the olive oil over medium heat.

Add the diced fennel with a pinch of salt, stir well, lower the heat and fry for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until fennel becomes soft and caramelizes.

Add garlic, fennel seeds and potato cubes and fry for another 5 minutes.

Pour in the bean liquid and/or water/stock and the saffron infused water.

Stir well and bring to a gentle simmer.

Cook for another 10-15 minutes or until potatoes are soft, then add the drained beans.

Season with salt and pepper and simmer for a few more minutes before stirring in chopped fennel leaves.

Serve!

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Notes:

• If you don't have fennel tops, chopped parsley or chervil will work as well!
• I served mine with flatbread and homemade hummus (both recipes from the Moro cookbook, as well!), but I can image it being really, really good with fish, served almost like a sauce or stew.

First Potato harvest!

Yesterday we harvested our first potatoes.

After the harvest of our balcony potatoes in Berlin had been rather "modest" (100g total...), we actually picked more potatoes yesterday than we were able to eat. And that was only our first pick!
They were absolutely delicious!

Wil made rosemary garlic potatoes, and the best part was, that except for the sour cream, olive oil, salt and pepper, all the ingredients were from our garden.

Originally we had planted four different kinds: Yukon Gold, Warba, Pink Fir Apple and Russet Burbank.

the lighter ones with the sometimes pinkish skin are Warba, the other ones are Yukon Gold, with maybe one or two Russet Burbank hiding....

We mainly had Yukon Gold and Warba yesterday, since the Pink Fir Apple and Russet Burbank weren't ready yet.

Yukon Gold which seems to be a very popular potato among Canadians, was a great firm potato with a nice classic potato flavor and golden yellow flesh -  a very good allround potato.

The Warba really surprised me. Softer, but not mealy, with pretty white flesh, at times reddish-pink skin tone it was much more flavorful than the Yukon Gold, almost spicy.

Homemade ice tea and rosemary garlic potatoes with sour cream and lots of other herbs.

For now the Warba wins the contest of best tasting potato in our garden. Let's see how the others compete, once they are out of the ground. I only heard good things about the Pink Fir Apple...