Confit Fennel with Chardonnay and Honey Mustard

I’m sitting in our caravan, a relatively small one by today’s standards. We’re in a western NSW town for our fourth day, a day longer than planned. My keyboard is dappled with pretty dancing light and shadows tip toeing across my hands back and forth as I type. They float through the window in the shape of old-fashioned bottle brushes and finger shaped leaves created by sun peeping through waving branches of blooming Callistemon trees that surround our little patch of earth on which we’re parked. Waving branches perhaps a polite description 30 knot gusts. Not only do the shadows move back and forth, but our small home on wheels jolts side to side too. We’re being buffeted by gusts of winds strong enough to remind us our salubrious little abode is indeed on wheels and not permanent. The weather front passing our locale has halted our travels, grounding us, keeping us in place another day as it passes. The thought of hauling a large square ‘box’ not really designed for cross winds behind a car of equally square arrangement, enough to force us to make do and stay put for just one more day.

The phrase ‘making do’ is often preceded with the word just… “just make do,” suggesting making do is a compromise. That to live with what’s at hand, what’s around you, what’s available is somehow not as great an existence as what could be, or what’s missing. However a holiday touring and traveling is one requiring the utmost compromise and making do, but in the best possible way.

Compacting your normally busy and plentiful life into a 5 metre long caravan and car with barely a plan but a vague direction into which you head, following the sun, a midway point as a guide and the coast your road home, requires some thought and a lot of concession. It requires thought and planning. Enough clothes but not too many, ingredients to make meals but the right ones for maximum flavour taking up minimum space while still maintaining enough nutrition and interest (maybe that’s just me), spare parts and tools for any mishaps or glitches, medicines to last, toiletries, water etc ad nauseum. It can be enough to make your brain spin and consider a well-planned all-inclusive tour on which someone else does all the planning and you just turn up and enjoy. But that wouldn’t really be the point or the same holiday. We’re fairly well versed at this exercise, we’ve traversed the highways of Australia zig zagging across the wide-open planes many times. We’ve travelled with tiny babies, toddlers and kids in the most basic of camping set ups through various iterations to what now feels like a floating hotel room. Our family has gazed at billions of stars while our toes burrowed in the red dirt of the outback, breathed in eucalyptus fragranced mist at dawn on mountain tops in the high country (ok I may have done that from the comfort of a sleeping bag with one eye half open #notamorningperson) and walked isolated beaches as sapphire blue waters lapped our feet. What we’ve not done before is travel with nary a plan. Our journeys are normally planned to the day with itineraries dictating the day’s location, travel or plans, their length instructed by school holidays or annual leave from work. This time is different and while planning what’s required to stow for enjoyment, comfort and safety remains a necessity a plan as loose as that with which we’ve set off requires a willingness to travel with fluidity and adaptability.

Our first week saw an overnight stop in a tiny town with the only availability for our new car’s first check-up service for hundreds of miles and consequently a birthday dinner for my husband at the local returned serviceman’s club.

A misstep by a very confused google maps taking us down a narrow road leading to a laneway style carriageway between paddocks of grain crops not really suited to a touring rig and the discovery that whatever grain was growing and I are not friends. Hello hives on legs after squatting amongst roadside stray crops to take photos. Maybe I should suggest an upgrade to google maps in which you can set a preference for roads worthy of a four-wheel drive trailing a caravan.

Also this week, the beautiful kindred spirit of small town communities found in a riverside precinct, a beautiful multicultural celebration and a spring festival marking the harvest of Griffith’s food crops and a promenade of sculptures created with a surplus of oranges from the region, one of only two places in the world in which this happens.

All inspiring and all examples of towns making the most of their communities and what their regions offer. Making do perhaps or making something special. Maybe that’s what ‘making do’ is. Maybe making do creates the space for a serendipity of its own leading to an unexpected ‘special.’ Maybe traveling with a mostly open-ended vague plan, without the limitation of a strict timetable and with a shrunken down life that fits into what amounts to a trailing box is the path to learning the joy in making do and appreciating the results.

With the ‘limitations’ this adventure presents my pantry is a modicum of what I’m used to reaching for. My dinner time yearnings however are not. With limited ingredients and a hankering for something delicious to accompany the lamb backstrap that Hubby was planning on barbecuing I started plotting. I’m now lucky enough to travel with an, albeit small, but normal fridge freezer arrangement. As you’d imagine its filled with a strategically selected collection of meat and vegetables, a perfect canvas for the equally tactical collection of flavourings and accoutrements in the cupboard. With the outback sun settling into the horizon the air had cooled and my desire for something warm and hearty to sit next to our lamb had also settled on me. With the bulb of fennel in the crisper, my favourite mustard found at a small local supermarket and the remains of a delicious chardonnay sourced in Wagga on our first night and some patience at the stove I made do, and the result created confit fennel with chardonnay and mustard.

I offer you this recipe with a warning of sorts. In the true spirit of making do I am travelling without scales, measuring spoons and, at best, a vague notion of time. Whist I’ve made my best effort to make this as precise as I normally would offer it does come with a small disclaimer that, like I have, you should trust your cooking gut and use your senses while following my instructions. Make do my friends.

Instructions:

1 bulb of fennel trimmed of tops, cored and thickly sliced into 1 cm slices

1 french shallot peeled and sliced

2 tbs salted capers washed and drained

1 garlic clove peeled and finely sliced

¼ c extra virgin olive oil

2 tsp butter

Good glug of white wine, I used chardonnay and would say a good glug is something akin to 2 tb

1 heaped tsp of Dijon honey mustard. If you don’t have this used 1 of regular Dijon and half of tsp of runny honey

¼ tsp dried oregano flakes 

Method:

Preheat olive oil in a medium to large fry pan (mine is 28cm at the base) over medium-low heat until oil is just starting to be runny and looser when you lift and roll the pan, 3-4 minutes. Reduce heat to low and add fennel and shallot. Stir to coat thoroughly in the oil and allow to simmer stirring often for 5-7 minutes until the edges are translucent one third of the way to centre of the slices As pictured below, the middle of the slices will still be white. Ensure when stirring the shallot is not browning.

At this stage add the garlic and capers and stir well again cooking another five minutes stirring often to make sure the garlic softens and melts not browns.

Once fennel is soft and completely translucent stir in the butter and increase heat to medium high, watch closely so the vegetable doesn’t catch and butter burn, it’s fine if it caramelises at the edges. After 1-2 minutes when it’s increased in heat splash in the wine, it should immediately bubble up and start to reduce. After the wine has reduced by perhaps half’ish after a couple minutes stir in the mustard and sprinkle over the oregano. Allow to simmer a minute more then serve immediately.

We enjoyed it next to barbecue lamb backstap topped with beetroot relish stirred through Greek yoghurt, bbq’ed corn and green salad. It would also be delicious with roast pork and greens or chicken. This served the two of us, both fennel lovers.