[food, growth] applications of fennel

[kaberett]

I'm a cliché, I know, but the fennel I have been growing on the plot ('Colossal') is genuinely the nicest I think I've ever had: it's sweet and aromatic and delicious and I am delighted by it, and in addition to the bulbs I'm eating I'm intending to leave some to go to seed so I can grow More next year.

Something I had failed to properly anticipate when sowing it, however, is that fennel fronds are... a thing. A big feathery... thing. On the plot at dusk they almost manage to resemble a tiny forest, and it would be ridiculous to just put all of that straight back in the compost, so I've... been eating it? I've been eating it and working out what on earth to do with it with a certain degree of perplexity.

I also brought a bulb down to Cornwall with me, having stopped off at the allotment to pick up the fabled Phormium tenax, and subsequently have been doing Further Cooking. Adventures in fennel thus far:

• fronds (and some of the leggier bits of stalk) chopped up fine, in leek-and-potato soup
  
• fronds in courgette fritters
  
• fronds in potato salad
  
• fronds in non-potato salad
  
• bulb roasted, in any variety of useful roasted-veg contexts
  
• bulb chopped up fine in risotto (yesssssss)

Comments

[khronos_keeper]

I vaguely remember eating fennel once-ish and rather liked it, but have since never had luck in sowing it. Such is life in great hemiboreal wasteland. I want to try again this year, and I am going to take some of the recipes you listed!

[kaberett]

Ha. Good luck! <3