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I couldn’t stand asparagus as a kid – possibly due to the fact that, in my mother’s kitchen, it mostly came out of cans (newsflash to all the trendy revivalists – the 80s SUCKED) – and now I’m pretty much obsessed with it. Mushrooms, courgettes (actually, “zucchini” where I’m from), aubergines (eggplant to us Yanks), artichokes – I used to hate them all.
Fennel, or finnichio in my Italian-American family, is another one that I roundly dismissed for about 25-odd years. My mom hates the stuff, so I never had that much exposure to it. I’ve also heard that in Italy, “finnichio” is also used as a derogatory term for homosexuals, but I’m not sure how reliable my source is, and I doubt that would be why my mother never cooks it.
One of my favorite recipes is the Fennel, Tomato and White Bean soup from James Peterson’s Splendid Soups book, a hefty volume with over 300 recipes for every kind of soup imaginable, and a billion different ways to make stock. I first made this for a vegetarian friend, who later told me she’d never liked fennel till she’d tried this soup, so I think this might be the one to convert my mom. It’s one of those recipes that’s very healthy without being preachy about it – there’s hardly any fat at all, aside from my own addition of the cheese.
