Fennel Wrap-up

On Saturday night, I sat down in the park up the street from me to write this entry. When I opened it up to post it this evening, I realized that I was about to give you two long philosophical rambles in a row. So, I chopped all that crap out, and cut straight to the stuff I needed to say about fennel.


Fennel Tea

It’s easy, and it’s delicious. Half-fill your tea infuser with fennel seeds, steep for ten minutes. (Lightly crush the seeds beforehand for a tea that is more potent, but also more bitter.) You get a light green tea that tastes, more or less, exactly how you’d expect it to taste – pleasantly licorice-flavored. (Remember, I don’t like licorice – one of the things that I like about fennel is that it’s got the same sharp taste, without the cloying sweetness.) It’s nice and sweet without needing sugar, and supposedly promotes the production of breast milk. Mmmm, mmmm! What’s not to like?

Fennel Bread

While I really, really enjoyed the delicious scent and slight twang to the taste buds that the fennel added, I’m not going to bother posting the recipe that I used. Because while it smelled wonderful, and tasted great, its density was approximately equal to a neutron star. Victoria and I were out of all-purpose flour, and so I substituted whole wheat. Apparently, you can’t just substitute whole wheat flour for bread flour. I never claimed to be a good baker.

Anyway, a tablespoon (or two) of whole fennel seeds in a loaf of bread is an amazing addition. I think it would also be great to sprinkle on top of the loaf, like rye seeds, or even to use on a bagel instead of sesame seeds or whatever.

Fennel Mushrooms

The fennel mushrooms were okay, not amazing. Unlike some of the other spices, the fennel flavor really seemed to conflict with the mushroom’s own flavor – it didn’t taste bad, but it didn’t blend in the same way that coriander did, for instance. The mushrooms themselves, however, are getting better and better – Victoria came up with the idea of using a wooden skewer to punch holes in them, and that seems to work perfectly.

Fennel Plant

I just wanted to show everyone a picture of my new fennel plant, Fenwick! It came in the mail last Thursday, and is still a little wilted from its trip. It's recovering nicely, though - Victoria is a good gardener.

Last Friday, the whole plant looked like the yellow, wilted part on the left side; it's been healing up nicely. The whole plant is edible; when it's mature, the leaf-tips will bear fruit - the seeds.

Right now, the plant is tiny. When it ages a bit, it will turn into this:

which is a fairly ugly piece of produce. The bulb at the bottom is kind of neat - it's all those stalks kind of wrapped together, in an odd way. Split it open and you can see it more clearly:

It's easy to see that the bulb is just different stalk-like structures, twined together.


Well, this has been a productive week, or almost week and a half, at this point. Fennel is a phenomenally interesting spice - rich and complex, with a sweetness and a twang to it. It's versatile, widely used, and yet something I knew absolutely nothing about. Which, again, is why I'm doing this.


Tomorrow (hopefully) I'll tell you why I hate your oregano so much.