Ingredient

Fennel

Raw fennel is crisp and strongly aniseed. Cooked slowly it becomes soft, sweet and only faintly so — two quite different ingredients from the same bulb, and people who dislike one often like the other.

Why cooking changes it so much

The aniseed character comes from anethole, a volatile aromatic compound. Volatile means exactly what it says: heat drives it off. So long, slow cooking removes most of what makes raw fennel taste distinctive and leaves the sugars behind.

Braised or roasted fennel is therefore sweet, mellow and vegetal, with only a background of aniseed. Raw fennel is sharp, crunchy and assertive.

If you want the aniseed, keep it raw or cook it briefly. If you want it to disappear into a dish, cook it long and slow — and it becomes one of the best background vegetables there is, especially with fish, pork and tomato.

How to use it

Shaved raw

Very thinly sliced across the bulb, dressed with lemon, oil and salt. Best with orange, parmesan, or oily fish.

Braised

Quartered, browned, then cooked slowly in stock and butter until completely soft.

Roasted

Wedges at a high heat until caramelised at the edges.

In a soffritto

Diced with onion and celery as the base of a fish stew or a tomato sauce.

Grilled or griddled

Sliced thickly so it holds together.

The fronds

The feathery tops are a herb. Use them like dill, raw, at the end.

Preparing a bulb

1. Cut off the stalks and fronds, keeping the fronds.
2. Trim a thin slice off the base, but leave the core intact if you are cooking it in wedges — the core is what holds them together.
3. Remove the outer layer if it is tough, bruised or stringy. On a fresh bulb it usually is not.
4. Cut in half through the root.
5. For raw use, cut out the core and slice across the bulb as thinly as you can — a mandoline is ideal here.
6. For cooking, cut into wedges through the root so each wedge holds together.

Buying and storing

• Look for firm, white, tightly layered bulbs with no browning at the cut edges and fresh green fronds.
• Squat, rounded bulbs are usually more tender than flat elongated ones.
• Avoid any that are split, dried out at the top, or have a lot of brown or stringy outer layers.
• They keep about a week in the fridge. The fronds wilt much faster than the bulb.
• Fennel seeds are from a related plant and are much more intensely aniseed. They are excellent with pork, sausage and tomato, and worth toasting first.

The rest of the plant

Four different ingredients come off one fennel, and most cooks throw three of them away.

• The fronds. The feathery top growth. Use like dill — on fish, in salads, stirred into a dressing at the end. Never cook them.
• The stalks. Too fibrous to eat as they are, and excellent in stock, under a roasting fish, or sliced very thin across the grain.
• The core. Solid and edible. Leave it in if you are cutting wedges, because it holds them together; cut it out if you are slicing.
• The outer layer. Often stringy on a large bulb. Peel it off rather than discarding the bulb, or use it in stock.
• Fennel seed. From a different variety grown for seed, and a different intensity — sweeter, more aniseed, and it survives long cooking.
• Fennel pollen. Expensive and extraordinary. A pinch on pork or fish at the end does more than a spoonful of seed.

Common questions