Pork steaks with fennel and rosemary

My woman's old man likes to grill stuff. Sadly, he also likes to shop at places like Aldi. Every year, in every supermarket round there here parts, you'll see shedloads of schwein-nacken-kotelettes, or nackensteaks, often vacuum packed in some god awful red marinade that will stain your hands for 5 months if you touch it. Serve them up with some random wursts and a blob of kodoffisolod, and that's dinner. Hmm. 6/10 - could do better.

Today, I got some of these nacken chappies, but just the raw meat, no red dye. This is what I'm doing with the porky fellows:

For 2 nacken things:

1tbps fresh rosemary, finely chopped
1tbps fennel seeds, busted up a bit with a pestle and mortar, but not ground to dust
clove of garlic, crushed and squidged with the back of a blade and a pinch of salt to make a puree
some salt & pepper
about 2 or 3 tbps olive oil

Mix all the above stuff in a bowl, rub it into the steaks, whack in a fridge for a few hours. Dead easy. Garlic and rosemary are easy flavours to spot, but not alot of people use fennel seeds, and they add a delicious elusive flavour to the meat that will make people go "mmmmmmmm".

It is summery, so I just want fennel. No idea why, perhaps it is memories of drinking loads of pastis in the sun, but I really want that aniseed flavour. There are seeds in the marinade, but I want more, so I am also slicing up a head of fennel and chargrilling that too. Rub a teeny bit of oil onto each slice, but really, only a teeny bit, then season well and whack on the grill. When one side is done, and has some nice grill marks on it, turn them, and pour a little olive oil onto the side facing upwards. As the other side cooks, this oil will start to simmer a bit, and make a really good creamier consistency to the fennel flesh. Delicious.
Grill the pork at the same sorta time, and don't forget to season after the cooking, even though you've seasoned before. Trust me, so many people underseason.

The pork and fennel are gonna be served up with some crunchy bread and a few salad leaves tossed in a bit of oil and lemon. Simple, and 5000% better than some vacuum packed "grill fertig" nightmare from Tenglemanns or wherever.

Fennel just reminds me too much of childbirth and that godawful fennel tea they want you to drink by the gallon from the second the kid pops out until you get away from the sadistic nurses in the maternity ward.

Other than that, it sounds nummy.

Fennel tea can go and just into the pikey pit. It is not beer, so drinking it is pointless as far as I am concerned. We'Ve even got some fennel tea espeically for babies here. Bloody Germans.

Fennel flavour with fish or pork though? Wicked.

Excellent and timely post, don. I'm off to a BBQ at Chez Schwiegerfamilie this weekend, and they only shop at Aldi so I was anticipating exactly the meal you described.

I blew their minds the last time I was at their place and cooked up -- wait for it -- lasagna, so I'll try your meat preparation and see what happens. I'll serve the steaks with a little instructional cooking guide I'm writing entitled Seasonings Are Not Poison So Try Using Some.

Nope, that was all wrong. Sorry.

Needs more garlic, so for 2 steaks, use 3 cloves or so. Also could use more rosemary, and certainly needs a generous bit of salt, and a good squeeze of lemon after cooking. Fennel comes through pretty good though.
Oh, for the fennel bulb side dish, I pre-griddled it to get a decent criss-cross pattern on it , because father in law uses those alufoil grill tray things. I

Which only really make sense with pickled meat to keep the nitrate from dripping on the coals. You got lots of flavors going there, don, isn't the fennel a bit overpowering? I mean, fennel on the meat and fennel bulbs? Did you put anything on the bulbs before serving or just baste them with spiced or herbed oil while on the grill?