Barley Risotto with Fennel

I found this recipe on EatingWell.com when I was looking for barley recipes.  It sounds good and uses a slow-cooker instead of a human being stirring non-stop.  I was unable to find oil-cured black olives and learned too late that they are just dry-cured olives soaked in oil, so I'm just going to use some leftover kalamata olives from my fridge and see how that goes. 

Ingredients

• 2 teaspoons fennel seeds
• 1 large or 2 small fennel bulbs, cored and finely diced, plus 2 tablespoons chopped fronds
• 1 cup pearl barley, or short-grain brown rice
• 1 small carrot, finely chopped
• 1 large shallot, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
• 1-1 1/2 cups water, divided
• 1/3 cup dry white wine
• 2 cups frozen French-cut green beans
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/3 cup pitted oil-cured black olives, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon freshly grated lemon zest
• Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Directions

1. Coat a 4-quart or larger slow cooker with cooking spray. Crush fennel seeds with the bottom of a saucepan. Combine the fennel seeds, diced fennel, barley (or rice), carrot, shallot and garlic in the slow cooker. Add broth, 1 cup water and wine, and stir to combine. Cover and cook until the barley (or rice) is tender, but pleasantly chewy, and the risotto is thick and creamy, 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 hours on high or low.

2. Shortly before serving, cook green beans according to package instructions and drain. Turn off the slow cooker. Stir the green beans, Parmesan, olives, lemon zest and pepper into the risotto. If it seems dry, heat the remaining 1/2 cup water and stir it into the risotto. Serve sprinkled with the chopped fennel fronds.

[Edited 2/6/13:  I found this a little bland.  In order to gather 1 tablespoon of lemon zest, I'd probably have to zest half a dozen lemons (my zester holds a lot hostage -- I should probably just get a new one), so I ended up zesting one lemon and juicing half of it into the risotto.  Don't do that.  The flavor of the juice is too strong and stands out.  Adding a lot of salt helped, and Sameer mentioned that he liked the olives best, so next time I'll at least double the olives, which should also help with the salt.  I'll omit the parmesan because we couldn't even tell it was in there.  I'll add another shallot too.  I feel like adding butter would make it a lot better, but it would make it significantly less healthy, to the point that I will not do that.  Maybe actually finding oil-cured olives would help with that.]