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Gary350
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Location: TN. 50 years of gardening experience.

Are you cooking with Dill & Fennel?

I would like to know what people cook with Fennel and Dill fresh from the garden?

NOT interested in dill pickles.

I am interested in, main dishes, sauces, soup, stew, marinade, bread, etc, anything but dill pickles.

SQWIB
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Location: Zone 7A - Philadelphia, PA

I used fresh Dill on fish and a Mediterranean feta Salsa that is outstanding.
I also harvest seeds at the end of the season for a Dill bread that is amazing.
I mainly plant Dill and parsley for the caterpillars.

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applestar
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Location: Zone 6, NJ (3/M)4/E ~ 10/M(11/B)

I think dill goes well with egg dishes like scrambled and omelets, even sprinkled on sunny sides and eggs Benedict.
Also definitely fish — smoked Salmon/lox, dill butter on white meat fish, etc. I usually use oregano or marjoram in tuna salad but use dill for change of pace sometimes.

Not as familiar with fennel greens— anise/licorice-like flavor so more unique I think? I do use fennelseeds in curry-type spicy dishes. Looking forward to other suggestions. 8)

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MoonShadows
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Location: Stroudsburg, PA - Zone 6a

I love dill in dips. I dry it, mix it with dried onion or whatever and keep it in a jar. A couple of teaspoons in 2 cups of sour cream (or 1 cup sour cream, 1 cup mayonnaise) and you have a great party dip.

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digitS'
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The bulb fennel that I had in the garden one year, went untouched. I just didn't know what to do with it.

Dill, I just like to have out there :wink: .

Okay, I find good use for it in the kitchen, too! Foremost, as has been noted, using it on fish. Baked salmon with dill is just great - a couple slices of lemon, sprinkle of garlic salt, grind or two of black pepper ... Dill is also good in a dip for the tilapia we have fairly regularly. DW likes dill over a beef roast with rosemary and, somehow, it made good sense when I saw it in a list of beef stroganoff ingredients. I think that will have to be a meal coming up soon.

Steve

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ElizabethB
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Dill with eggs - cooked any way, on fish, compound butter, aioli, in a cream sauce or béchamel with seafood - shrimp, crawfish, oysters, blue point crab. Infused olive oil.
I did grow leaf fennel one year and used in compound butter and aioli.

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webmaster
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Location: Amherst, MA USDA Zone 5a

Fennel leaves can be used as part of an Italian herb marinade for beef, chicken or pork roasts.

ButterflyLady29
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Dill is wonderful in mashed potatoes. Also very good on salmon and in egg or pasta salads.
I've never had fennel bulbs or leaves. I'm not very fond of anise flavoring in anything.

pepperhead212
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A lot of Italian recipes out there for fennel bulbs. And, though not traditional in Mexican, I remember Rick Bayless had a number of recipes in his books that used not only the bulbs, but the feathery fronds, as an herb.

And something that surprised me when I first saw it was the use of large quantities of dill in Laotian food,sometimes a half or 3/4 cup, chopped up! I had never seen it in all of the SE Asian dishes I had made, or any of the recipes in all those books, until I bought a book on Laotian cuisine. It was delicious, though it's been a while since I made any of it.

imafan26
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I like fresh dill in fish. I put fresh dill, garlic and olive oil in the fish cavity before cooking to get rid of the fishy smell.
I make a garlic dill butter which goes well with beans.
Small amounts of fennel leaves can be added to fruit salads
The seeds can be used as an ingredient in cookies and baked goods and can be added to a garam masala recipe for Indian curries.
The finocchio fennel bulbs can be braised with shallots white wine and chicken or beef stock, sauteed with butter olive oil and garlic, fennel and cucumber salsa, or fennel salad with a balsamic vinaigrette (Vinegar mellows the licorice taste of fennel and makes it more subtle), Fennel and carrots, fennel can be roasted with other vegetables like carrots, beans and potatoes.

I like to keep fennel in the garden in a corner because it is an aphid trap and ladybugs love to raise their young on it. The blooms last a long time and provide nectar and pollen for beneficial insects like lady bugs, lace wings, syrphid flies, and parasitic wasp. It does have to be grown 10 ft away from most other plants.

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ElizabethB
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Bulb fennel is on my cooking bucket list.



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