Making friends with fennel

Last month I was captivated by cauliflower. This month I have been a bit obsessed with fresh fennel. It was never my intention with this newsletter to focus exclusively on one seasonal vegetable with each issue. But it does make sense in a publication that tries to focus on the needs of a small household to devote time to sharing how I use one vegetable in a variety of ways (so I don’t tire of it before I am able to use it up). So I hope that you won’t mind a second issue in a row that is centered exclusively around one vegetable.

Because fennel might seem a bit unfriendly, it may not have been something you have used—or turned to with any regularity. It reminds me of the leek in this regard: it is used routinely in Mediterranean cooking (particularly the peasant foods of Provence and Italy)….but not so much here in the U.S. (even though it grows well here). I fell in love with it while working with chefs who had worked extensively in the south of France…and while spending time working there myself. I hope that I will be able to entice you to seek it out and give it a try in one of the recipes I’m sharing this month.

But first…a couple of March images from my world: A house finch nest on my mother’s front porch. Daffodils…and forced blossoms from my peach and pear trees. It’s almost spring….

In season

One might wonder why I am choosing to write about fennel now though—in early March. If you look in most cookbooks devoted to vegetables, you will find that fennel is considered to be a spring and a fall vegetable. And accordingly, in the Midwest where I live, it shows up in the farmers markets sometime in June…and it will occasionally appear again in September. I have never thought of it as a doldrums of late winter kind of vegetable…although it has always seemed generally available “out of season,” with the uneven quality one would expect of vegetables subjected to long distance travel.

At the end of last month, I decided to offer a salad that included fennel in a pop up dinner. We are nearing spring…and I thought it would add a refreshing lift to a winter menu. I hesitated though, worrying that I wouldn’t be able to find nice fennel. I finally decided to risk it because I really didn’t need a lot. When I went shopping I found beautiful and abundant fennel at almost every store (on sale even). I was truly surprised by this….and frankly a bit mystified.

As it turns out, most of the fennel in the U.S. is grown in Arizona and California—where it is currently the perfect “cool season” for cultivating fennel. What you find at the store will likely not look as pristine as what you might find from a small local grower during your late spring and early fall (since it will have endured the rough handling of cross country shipping), but once trimmed for use, it should be very nice. Fennel is “in season”…right now.

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