Roasted Fennel with Mascarpone and Date Syrup

This roasted fennel with mascarpone and date syrup is an easy but equally impressive and delicious side or tapas style dish, and perfectly balanced in flavor.

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Fennel is something I remember easting often growing up, served raw in slices after dinner. It was always a crispy and refreshing bite to cleanse the palette after a savory dinner (although I didn’t think of it that way back then, I just liked its crunch and slight licorice flavor). People do this in many parts of the world, as fennel has been proven to aid in digestion. But while raw fennel is distinct and delicious in its own way, roasted fennel takes on a whole different but equally delicious flavor profile. It becomes tender and almost buttery, deeply savory with a hint of sweetness and a much more mellow licorice flavor (for those who don’t like licorice). When paired with creamy mascarpone, sweet date syrup and nutty pistachios, as it is here, it’s maybe one of my favorite foods in the world.

A PERFECT PAIRING

Fennel is a popular Italian ingredient (even though its used in many cuisines around the world), and as such it holds a special place in my heart. For those who didn’t know, it’s the main spice that chefs use in Italian sausage, that distinctly “Italian sausage” flavor that maybe you could never quite put your finger on. It grows natively in the Mediterranean, and can even be found growing wild by the side of the road in Italy. So for this roasted fennel dish, I really wanted to play up those Mediterranean flavors by pairing it with some other typical ingredients from this region: traditional Italian mascarpone, date syrup (a typical ingredient from the other side of the Mediterranean) and pistachios.

And that combination of ingredients makes this dish perfectly balanced and deeply delicious. The fennel is buttery and soft from its roast, and the mascarpone plays up that creaminess. Meanwhile, the date syrup enhances the inherent sweetness of the fennel. And the pistachios balance everything with a salty crunch on top. I literally bit into this dish and thought to myself: “wow, this is maybe one of my favorite things I’ve ever made.” And the best part is, it really couldn’t be any easier to make.

A TAPAS STYLE DISH

Ever since getting back from this incredible trip to Spain, I’ve been craving dinners made up of tapas style dishes, small bites of a bunch of different things. And this roasted fennel dish was one that I made for a recent weeknight dinner, along with another more traditional Spanish tapas dish (that I’ll post a recipe for soon). While I made it on a pretty small scale for just myself, you could easily scale this dish up to feed a crowd. I think it would be an especially good side for any kind of roasted meat, but is also filling enough as a main course, or the perfect appetizer for any meal.

And since I made this dish as part of a weeknight meal, you know it couldn’t be easier to make. It took me all of five minutes to prep, and while the fennel takes a little while to roast, that’s time you can spend doing something else. Once roasted, throw the fennel together with the other ingredients and get ready for a ridiculously delicious bite of food.