Sounds wonderful. I've never put fennel in a beef stew but I love it.

I had that happen recently with a stew but it tasted great. I add some crunchy things as a topping for texture.

You must have a garden to have so many varieties of carrots and to have a bulb of fennel.

I love a good bulb of fennel, but they are so rare to find in the market.

Good that your stew survived!

Bulb fennel in beef stew and pot roast is a must for me - better than celery, IMO.

And stews almost always taste better on the 2nd day, don't they?

LOL! Jasdip, I was going to put in a jalapeño, but I kept forgetting, and saw the can of Ro-tel, which was left from a recipe, when I was looking for a can of tomatoes. ;). It's just diced tomatoes with a bit of kick. Vermouth is great in this kind of thing. I keep cooking quality port, sherry, madeira and marsala in a cupboard by the stove for deglazing and other winey tasks, and but I have't figured out how to fit the sake, and the vermouth is too tall. ;) They each have their uses. :). None of it matters for a stew. Use what you have, keeping in mind what flavors go well together, and It'll be great!

Wednesday, I only grow herbs and lemons. The fat carrots come from my weekly farm boxes, but we get the regular carrots—longer and pointier— in the same colors where I shop locally. They come in bunches of orange or “rainbow”. The latter usually have red and orange as well as purple and yellow, and sometimes a true white, though I wonder if those are albinos. The rainbow bunches from the farm are whatever they have going, and reds are scarcer. Fennel is usually available here—a lot of things are—but this one also came from the farm box.

Everybody, this is more a beef flavored root stew than a beef stew. There was only one pound of meat. :)

I have a head of green kale which I think will make a nice contrast to the sweetness of the roots.

Heavily reduced stew is especially good on top of pasta or gnocchi, especially when wine is involved. There is also a type of ravioli stuffed with braised/stewed beef (and optionally, chard) that is terrific.

I've often eaten "overcooked" stew, I learned to eat that when I was still working and would start a crock pot full of supper in the morning and have it for supper 10 or 12 hours later or more, sometimes, if the girls had sports or school related activities.

I like fennel a lot, but it's expensive and so I use it as seasoning more than as an actual food. The stew sounds perfect to me, I always like the vegetables far more than I like well done beef!

Annie

I had promised Marcolo's smoky spice pumpkin soup for dinner today, but I was up late last night and early this morning and was just tired. As I was thinking about cleaning the leek and scrubbing the carrots, it occurred to me that that I already had that beautiful cooked down stew with similar enough ingredients. I did chop some celery and started it with some garden sage in some light olive oil, started the spices in it, and then added a couple cups of the stew (picked free of the meat) and broth. Added the previously roasted butternut and hit it all with an immersion blender. It was SO good! I was worried it might be too sweet, but I added some cardamom and extra smoked Spanish paprika, and it was fab. The overcooked stew is now a staple!

FWIW, if you can grow dill, bulbing fennel is super easy to grow. I have some in a pot right now.