Wow :) Thank you for this recipe. This is my first review here - I absolutely had to do it. Made as written, except I had only half the pine nuts called for. Oh well - this met all expectations and preferences. It's a healthy, rich, vegetable-based pasta dish and the ingredients included as written play well together without any flavor disappearing during the cook time. And thank you for helping me like fennel! I want to, and fennel cooked this way, a little caramelized with onion, makes a rich dish that would be great as a side or main dish. When I smelled it after adding the wine I was sure it would be great. I thought about adding garlic, meat, red pepper flakes, or butter and anything like that would either overpower the more delicate flavors here and/or make it much less friendly to a middle aged woman's waistline. One notable item - added salt is unnecessary because the fennel essence, lemon juice, tomato, wine, and Parmesan satisfy most all but the most salt-addicted palate.
The only thing I did different was add the parmesan cheese into the sauce at the same time as the pine nuts and lemon juice. Neither hubby nor I love fennel but we regularly get it in the CSA box and keep trying different recipes. This is the best recipe we've tried yet. We both enjoyed this and will make it again. By the way I used the full 1/2 C of oil and didn't find it to be too oily. Oh and I guess I did make one other tiny change: using canola instead of olive oil. Olive oil doesn't like to be cooked; better to use a high heat oil on the stove.
Great recipe...I substitute wild fennel and shallots. I will make this pasta dish again.
I cut the oil in this recipe in half because I'm watching my calories and this dish was still really greasy. If I make it again I will try halving the olive oil again to bring it down to 2 tbsp. I liked the flavors but my daughter and my husband thought it was just so so.
OMG! Absolutely delicious!! My husband and I love to eat raw fennel; I have never cooked with it before. This was the perfect dish to make. The only substitution I made was a can of diced tomatoes for the plum tomatoes. I had all other ingredients on hand. I cannot wait to make this again exactly as the recipe is written for the rest of my family.
The next time I'll add 3 cloves of garlic.
Love this! I changed some small unimportant things just because I wanted to use what I already had in the house but this recipe is delicious.
So glad to find this recipe. I made it this evening exactly as written except that I seasoned the fennel and onions with a small amount of kosher salt and ground black pepper as it was being sauteed. This is absolutely delicious. My husband gave big thumbs up too. I will definitely make again.
