My Friend Fennel

Of course growing up in a farm town in Michigan, I never had even a distant encounter with fennel. My parents joked once that Greg Fraser, a kid in town, was sent by his mother to the drug store to ask for anise. And he pronounced it anus. The local druggist, Fred Gaul, must have ratted him out. Making me wonder now: Why the drug store? Would that have been an over the counter remedy? Surely not a controlled substance.

At any rate, with marriage into an Italian family I soon became acquainted with fennel. And with anise, in a flavored liquor, a few drops of which my father-in-law used to flavor his morning coffee. And in a more potent grappa common to the family’s region of Italy, San Marino and Emilia-Romagna, called mistrá. Not unlike ouzo or Sambucca, only more refined, by which I mean not as syrupy as those OTC anise liquors, the one we had in the house was moonshine made by a guy up in the hills somewhere in San Marino. We brought it home in unmarked liter-and-a-half bottles. In addition to functioning as a coffee corrector and a digestivo, Mistrá was also poured over ricotta, with sugar sprinkled over it, to be eaten as a dessert, something my father-in-law was introduced to in Libya before the onset of World War II. 

But fennel. When I joined the family we ate it mostly at holiday dinners, as an appetizer with cheeses and salami. Lately I’ve been stewing it. In regional speak they say “in umido” to designate a dish the cooked in olive oil and garlic and tomato and other suitable ingredients. The fennel in umido is just that. The trimmed bulb sliced top to bottom, then further sliced, and slow cooked with a few tablespoons of tomato puree added.

There’s nothing neutral about fennel. Consider the folklore. Prometheus hid fire in a stalk of fennel. Pliny the Elder associated it with purification, helping to cleanse the body of undesirable humors. The ancients believed snakes would rub against fennel to sharpen their sight. The Kitchen Window segment on NPR reports: “In medieval times, fennel was used to protect against witchcraft and evil spirits.” Fennel made bad wine taste good. Paolo Gavin writes in The Tablet, “17th century Venetian innkeepers would offer fennel and nuts free to their customers before serving them inferior wine.” Carry it with you and people would perceive you as trustworthy.

All these reasons and more to eat your fennel.

Cooking time for fennel in umido is 30-40 minutes. You can do it well in advance of the meal, then gently reheat it before serving. It is delicate and other-worldly, and we’re serving it to friends for lunch today.