Fennel

Foeniculum vulgare

vegetable

A swollen, strongly aniseed base of tightly packed leaves — not a true bulb — of a Mediterranean umbellifer; raw in thin slices or braised. It provides nitrates and fibre. Its seeds have long been drunk as a tea after meals for bloating and gas.

Origin

Mediterranean basin

Season (United States)

May to November · grows in your region

Preparation

Keep the fronds: they taste of dill and are used like a fresh herb. Its skin is eaten, and that is where its polyphenols sit: worth keeping, then — but under running water, rubbing it, which is what takes off most of what settles there, organic or not.

Molecules

Vegetable nitrates · Insoluble fibersIn small amounts, not counted Falcarinol · Potassium · Anethole

Did you know?

Prometheus stole fire from Olympus in a hollow fennel stalk; and Marathon, the plain of the battle, means “field of fennel”.