• Recipe List
  • Sophie

Stories from the Stove

Stories from the Stove

Monthly Archives: June 2013

A field of fennel

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Food, Herbs, Ingredients, Italy, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories, Walking

IMG_2842

A couple of days ago I went for a walk in Lake Hollywood, my usual amble in the morning. It is a flat, paved trail that loops round the lake – not actually a lake at all but a reservoir surrounded by a forbidding high wire fence – and was prepared to be unamazed by it. There have been a few interesting sightings in the past (Mila and Ashton swanning past, Valene from Knots Landing ‘jogging,’ an eagle having a bath), but I was not in the mood. I wanted to walk until my legs ached, with my head down.

There was no sun to speak of, but a heavy haze, and the occasional patch of vague brightness trying to push through. Two ducks sat in the muck, pecking at some iridescent greenery. After a while, one stopped pecking and just stood there. Come on, you’ve had your fun, it seemed to say. So I moved on. I sat on a grassy bank to rest my legs for a bit and watched a family of coyotes tumble down the side of the hill, stopping to bite each other’s ears and roll around. They appeared one at a time, looked up and down the trail, and loped across to a hole in the fence, slipping through to the other side where the water was.

Up ahead there was a hole for me too, an unusual clearing where normally there is a closed gate. I walked through and up the hill and was surrounded by an oasis of wild flowers, bees, butterflies and wild fennel. I sat down on a stone mound.

Wild fennel is difficult to photograph. From afar it is just a sea of green feathers, a strange network of tentacles, a web. Up close it is too fine and long and wavy. You can never get it all in. So in the end I rolled a few in my hand and took in the smell. I was expecting licorice, the tarry, sticky sweets from childhood, but not lemon, rubber, grass, aniseed, hay, manure, mint, cough mixture and ferns.

Even as I walked past, this strange concoction spilled out. Wild fennel is a herb (or edible weed depending on who you read), and grows abundantly around the Mediterranean, and in Mediterranean climates such as southern California. It is easily confused with fennel the bulb, which has the same curly fronds up top, but is used principally for the fresh, clean chunkiness of its base. The herb, all frilly leaf, is used a lot in southern Italian cooking, particularly Sicilian, where they like to stuff the finocchio selvatico in their sardines, and the seeds in their sausages.

Umbel beginnings

Umbel beginnings

It felt like a real find, this place. There was no one else around, and though I could hear the voices of walkers on the main path, I was hidden from view. It is an economical landscape, because it is so dry. Looking only for lushness, meadows, and nodding snowdrops – Englishness – it’s easy to miss everything else. This field was gold, the dull, dry gold of old grass. Everything was matted, tufted and coarse with occasional bolts of bright colour from thistles. I had to give up the decision to be unmoved. The sun finally came out and I went and sat on the bridge and watched the turtles sunbathing at the lake’s edge.

IMG_2773

Fennel grows often in the most unprepossessing places: wastelands, car parks and even in the street. It propagates like mad, and is considered something of a pest here and a fire hazard. Don’t pick it where there is a good chance a dog (or person) has peed on it. The spring and early summer is when you get the fresh green shoots, the wavy fronds, that are used for stuffing into fish and strewing over fava beans and ricotta, risotto, and as a base for pesto.

The simplest treatment is to boil them until tender and serve with olive oil and lemon juice. The autumn is when you get the seeds. This is when the fronds die back and you get the dried, burnt-looking stalks. However mangled they look, the plants will be full of seed clusters. They look like little umbrellas (hence the name Umbelliferae, the family to which fennel belongs). You can pick off  the ‘umbels’, separate the seeds from the pods and dry them. They last forever.

IMG_2662

After eating fennel pretty exhaustively all week, this recipe makes the most sense to me, gustatorially (I’m not sure that’s a word). It’s a classic pairing of fava beans (broad beans in England) and ricotta with wild fennel fronds. Use the bushy stalks of bulb fennel in its place, or some mint, or whatever takes your fancy. You could use peas as well as, or instead of, fava beans.

Fava beans, ricotta and wild fennel

Adapted from Matthew Fort, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons

Serves 4

1 small onion

1 bunch of wild fennel

4 big handfuls of fava beans

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Ricotta or feta

When fava beans are older, husk them and pinch off their skins to reveal the bright green pods beneath – boiling them for 3 minutes will help shuck off their coats, if need be. Heat a glug of olive oil in a pan. Slice the onion finely and chop the fennel into small bits. Wilt them for a couple of minutes and then add the beans. Cook very gently for about 15 minutes. Add a little water if the beans are drying out before becoming tender. Serve with ricotta, or feta if you prefer a bit of salty sharpness. This is lovely served alongside some prosciutto crudo. 

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,369 other subscribers

Top Posts & Pages

Chocolate marmalade slump
Walnut bread
A Word About Dates
Small Crumbs of Comfort
Nasturtium-leaf sandwiches
A mess of meringue
Apple and sultana cake
Soft-boiled egg and soldiers
His favourite butter
A word about cherimoyas

Recent Posts

  • Mulberries
  • We are nature
  • Leaving home
  • A treacherous herb
  • Just stop it
  • Why I swim
  • Semi-derelict
  • Onward

Great books I’ve read

Blogs/Websites I read

  • Letitia Clark
  • Nigel Slater
  • Otter Farm
  • Penelope Lively
  • Room to heal
  • Samantha Harvey
  • Stewart Lee
  • The Idler
  • The Marginalian
  • Tom Cox
Follow Stories from the Stove on WordPress.com

Archives

  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • May 2022
  • February 2022
  • December 2021
  • August 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • January 2021
  • June 2020
  • November 2018
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • May 2016
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
"A WOW piece!" Claudia Roden on Walnut Bread

Walnut bread

Lucas’s chocolate marmalade slump

Tags

Afternoon tea Allotment Almonds Art Autumn Baking Bread Breakfast Cafes Cake Childhood Chocolate Christmas Citrus Claudia Roden Cookbook Cooking Dessert Devon Dinner Elizabeth David England Exmoor Fish Food France Fruit Gardening Gelato Gluten-free Herbs Home Homesickness Honey Ice cream Ices Ingredients Italy Jam Jane Grigson Lemons London Los Angeles Lucas Hollweg Marmalade Meat Mediterranean Meyer lemons Nature Nigel Slater Nonfiction Nuts Onions Patience Gray Poetry Pudding Reading Recipe Recipes Salad Sea Seasons Soup Spain Spices Spring Stone fruit Stories Summer Sussex Travel Vegetables Winter Writing Yoghurt

A WordPress.com Website.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • Stories from the Stove
    • Join 2,080 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Stories from the Stove
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: