Cream of Fennel and Cauliflower Soup - Announcing the Winners of Battle Fennel

Cooked fennel, cauliflower, and onion, blended together, form a thick, "creamy," and silky-smooth purée that a touch of cream at the end seems almost superfluous. I call this a 3-2-1 cream soup, i.e. 3 parts fennel, 2 parts cauliflower florets, and 1 part onion. Sweat these roughly-chopped ingredients in a heavy-bottomed pot until soft and translucent. Add just enough chicken or vegetable stock to barely cover the vegetables, and blend everything with an immersion blender, right in the pot.* Bring the mixture to a gentle boil; add just enough cream to achieve a thick, velvety consistency. Turn up the heat just to warm the soup through, but do not let it boil. Throw in some toasted fennel seeds, season with salt and pepper, and serve. That's all there is to this delicious soup with which I think I have redeemed myself from the great iniquity of a recent vegicide.

Without further ado, I am here to announce this month's Leela's Pick for the second round of our Beet 'n Squash YOU!! food fight -- Battle Fennel.

• First of all, I filtered out any entries that did not meet our guidelines.
• Then I looked through all the remaining dishes and chose ones wherein fennel was treated as the star, not a filler or an after-thought.
• Then out of that still-very-large group, I chose recipes that took the most advantage of what fennel had to offer: flavor, texture, aroma, and pairing potential with other key ingredients.
• The list was still quite long at that point, so I chose the recipes that weren't too complicated or costly to make and were deemed most likely to be replicated at home by our non-food blogger readers (who form the majority of our readership). This is the stage at which practicality wins over novelty. After all, one of the main purposes of the contest is to encourage people to cook with and eat vegetables more. Besides, I think, most of the time, the less you do with an ingredient, the more brightly it shines.
• The severely painstaking process had pared the list down to five equally strong candidates.
• That was when I stopped pretending to be a rational, thinking person and resumed my silly self. I asked my Twitter followers to pick a number between one and five. And what do you know? Some people who are kind, helpful, yet too innocent to detect my evil intent, actually sent in their votes. If you have any grievances, please leave me alone and go after them instead.**

As you can see we have a tie again this month. The winners are: Quasi Serendipita for her Fennel Ginger Soup.

And Nastassia of Let me Eat Cake for her Fennel Salad with Persimmon and Apple Cider Thyme Vinaigrette with Caña De Oveja Cheese.


Congratulations ladies! You did a great job! And thanks to each and every participant for making Battle Fennel so much fun.For a complete roundup of all entries, please see Mel's post.

While you're at it, please also check out Mel's fabulous video on how to make Roasted Fennel and Anchovies on Rosemary Polenta. My co-host did a very good job on that step-by-step instructional video.Announcing the next battle for January 2010: Battle Napa.Join us! Details here.
















*You can do this in a blender as well.

**These must-be-very-ticked-off-now individuals are as follows:

Pamela of Word on the Beach

LouAnn of Oyster Food and Culture

Rick who had inadvertently voted himself out of winning.

Amy of Dinners for a Year

John of Murphy Bros., and

Uncle Vinny of The Sayings of Uncle Vinny