Italian-flavored chicken sausage and roasted broccoli on a fennel pizza dough
I have fennel seeds drying on a baker's rack/computer stand in my dining room, and I owe it all to Alyssa of Everyday Maven. She showed me how to crush fennel seeds to add Italian sausage flavor, and it looked so easy I knew my daughter could do it picked up a bag of fennel seeds during my next Penzey's run. I handed the mortar and pestle to my girl and the result was delicious.
Then I bought a couple of fennel plants, and (in addition to feeding the Black Swallowtail caterpillars, can you see 4 in the photo above, and one wee Oliver?) I saved the seeds which are now drying on the baker's rack.
Did I use the fennel bulbs? Um, no. When I was ready to harvest the fennel and add it to spaghetti sauce there were 6 caterpillars simultaneously munching away, and I couldn't be that cruel. I can harvest strawberries--leaving the poorvarmintschipmunks to find something else to eat, but to deprive the world of 6 butterflies? Not my style. The fennel bulbs are now buried under snow and some of the descendants of those caterpillars are overwintering in cocoons nearby. Perhaps there will be more fennel next year--enough to share.
I've been sticking these fennel seeds in soups, in ground meat, in bread . . . and now pizza dough. This was a very versatile spice purchase. Thanks, Alyssa!
