Friday 30 September 2011

Fennel

Fennel is very popular in our house.  We seem to go through the seeds (or fruit if I'm being pedantic) at a rate of knots. Whenever I see a bulb, I'll buy it with great intentions for recipes. However, the temptation is always too great and it is inevitably eaten raw in slices stolen from the fridge during illicit raids.

I decided that it would make sense to try & grow some fennel but as you can see I've had limited success...


So we continue to buy it on a fairly regular basis instead. In the past week we have not only eaten handfuls of seeds straight from the jar but also...

made fennel tea by adding hot water to crushed seeds,


mixed fennel with garlic & salt & sprinkled on roast potatoes 10 minutes before the end of their cooking time


& baked flat breads with olive oil and fennel seeds.


As well as being delicious, fennel is also meant to be good for the digestion so drinking fennel liqueur is, of course, purely medicinal...


Fennel is also rumoured to be an aphrodisiac...(When I mentioned this to Mr TH he laughed & said he hadn't noticed it was.)

I also discovered that fennel is related to Hemlock...maybe we should cut down on our fennel intake next week!

12 comments:

silverpebble said...

Oof. Flatbread recipe please!

Angela said...

well I never knew THAT about fennel! I have never used it in cooking, but now I am tempted to go and buy some seeds!
thanks for such a wonderfully informative post

Thrifty Household said...

Flatbread (or impatient bread as I often think of it) is a handful of dough taken after the knead (first or second knead- makes no real difference) & rolled flat(mid roll you can add seeds, crushed garlic, herbs, whatever), brush with oil then bake for approx 10 mins...

Calico Kate said...

Bread sounds very yummy, but I@ll leave you with the fennel seeds. Love their frondy leaves to use in flower arrangements but neither of us can abide the stuff!
CKx

litlove said...

We love fennel! My main use for it is in couscous: I fry chopped onion and fennel, fennel seeds and a little chili, then add halved tomatoes and the couscous, prepared with lemon juice and lemon zest. Then on top of the couscous we steam white fish. It's a very tasty, easy midweek supper. I love your ideas here and I think I'll add it raw to salads next, as I've never tried that!

lizzie said...

I have a little jar of fennel seeds; I usually put them on pizza but they do look great on the roast potatoes and the flatbread.
Like your blog very much !

Thrifty Household said...

I love the sound of the lemony, fennely (fennelly?) couscous- that's now on my list of things to make. Thank You!

Anonymous said...

Baked flatbread with olive oil and fennel seed just went on my MUST MAKE list!!

Anonymous said...

I didn't know that there was a fennel liqueur, I feel a shopping trip coming on.

Annie Cholewa said...

Fennel tea is much enjoyed here ... fennel liqueur we've agreed we must try ;D

Scented Sweetpeas said...

Blimey if you ever drive past Isleham you can come and dig some of mine up, it pops up all over the place! Those seeds taste nice don't they :-)

Thrifty Household said...

Thank you for the offer- I may well take you up on that!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...