Fennel Compote With Tomatoes, Olives and Fish (or Not)

This sauce/side dish — a simple combination of fennel, tomatoes and olives — is magical. Not because it’s the best thing you ever ate, but because it’s transportive: you eat it and you’re in the Mediterranean. This is even true with winter tomatoes (though of course it’s better with those of summer, and see my suggestion below), because the dominant flavors are fennel and olives.

Fennel Compote With Tomatoes, Olives and Fish (or Not)
The fennel is cooked until almost jammy. It will never become as tender as onion, but it gets close. The heat barely diminishes its distinctive anise flavor and gives the final compote a lovely texture. Garlic, thyme and capers are all supporting cast members.

The olives are really the stars. If you use good olive oil, so much the better, but the oil that comes out of plump, juicy and unpitted olives is really sensational, and yes, I honestly believe that the pits contribute a flavor that isn’t there otherwise.

You ask “Which olives?” and I answer that I cannot afford to be that particular. I like big olives, because it’s a nuisance to pick 30 little ones out of what amounts to a sauce and eat them. So choose the big ones you usually like to eat, whether black or green or, best of all, a combination, and use those.

The next question involves what to do with the finished dish. It’s quite saucy, but not so much so that you cannot serve it as a side dish; I do that routinely. But if you combine it with fish, it’s a game changer. Perhaps my favorite suggestion is to crisp-sauté a fillet of skin-on white fish while the sauce is cooking. (Sear the skin side over fairly high heat for 80 to 90 percent of what you judge to be the total cooking time, then flip and finish quickly.)

That’s not the only possibility, though. Poached or steamed halibut nestles nicely in here, as do raw shrimp, added to the sauce during the last five minutes or so of cooking time.

Finally, the tomatoes: to intensify the flavor of even the most insipid plum tomatoes — canned tomatoes, too, for that matter — it helps to roast them first. Admittedly, this is another step, and not an insignificant one, so I’d never recommend it as essential. But you may find it’s helpful in getting through the winter: cut plum tomatoes in half, and put them skin side up on a foil-lined sheet slicked with olive oil. Feel free to add a few garlic cloves or thyme sprigs, or both, and roast the lot in a hot oven, at least 450 degrees, for about half an hour, until browned a bit. Slip off those skins and proceed to the Mediterranean.