For 4 people: 1 kg fresh fennel bulbs, 6 tbsp olive oil, bouquet of herbs tied together from: Rosemary, bay leaf and thyme; 1 l vegetable or chicken stock, salt, pepper.
Sweat cleaned, washed and well chopped fennel in a large pot in moderately hot oil to cover. Stir occasionally and be careful not to burn anything. After 10 minutes, remove the lid and brown and -sort of- caramelize the fennel over not too high heat. Add the bunch of herbs and pour in the stock. Cover and simmer for half an hour. Then remove the herb bouquet and turn the contents of the pot into a not-too-fine cream using a blender. Season to taste with salt and pepper and serve hot.
Fennel, a very good vegetable (despite "eigenous taste")
<u0022German fennel", Catarina Gurreri states with confident calm, "is also good". This is especially true for her, as she was born in Sicily, where (along with Puglia and Calabria) a large part of the Italian fennel comes from. She has also lived in Germany for about 30 years and has been trading in fruit and vegetables since 1987. She also knows the Oberrad fennel and therefore knows what she is talking about. Although: Italian fennel does taste stronger. But that's over at the beginning of June, when the finocchio gets too warm: it shoots up and blossoms.</p>
In Italy, people also appreciate the wild fennel, from which the vegetable fennel was cultivated, especially its green, which grows out of the heart of the bulb. Raw, as a salad; steamed and marinated as an appetizer or gratinated with butter and parmesan, that's how fennel tastes to people in Italy. Not to mention Ms. Gurreri's favorite Sicilian recipe: A pesto-like paste of anchovies, pine nuts, capers, saffron and wild fennel transforms pasta into "pasta palermitana". Not only in Palermo, in whole Italy the vegetable is popular, the generic name "Florentine fennel" for tuberous fennel expresses it.
German hobby gardeners took up the tuberous fennel already more than 100 years ago, it thrives nevertheless in the summer with us well, a light, nevertheless the humidity well holding soil presupposed.
Alfred Walterspiel already noted that some people did not like it, but that fennel, despite its peculiar taste, was a very good vegetable, on a par with celery, which was considered much finer. Nevertheless, German consumers had a hard time with fennel vegetables. Perhaps its sweet note, reminiscent of aniseed, was considered un-German, and the fact that babies are given fennel tea to calm them down (which is, of course, brewed from the seeds) probably didn't make the vegetable any more popular. In the meantime, however, more and more German customers are buying fennel, observes Caterina Gurreri. If you don't use it immediately, it's a good idea to keep the leaves short, because they draw moisture from the bulb and make it spongy and tough.
While fennel greens are generally preferred in France and are used not least as a salad herb, other preparations are known in Provençe, which borders on Italy. Not only do good fishmongers automatically fill the belly of a freshly gutted sea wolf or dorade with fresh fennel, they also like to steam the fish on a bed of tomatoes and fennel. And then I once ate a creamy, wonderfully aromatic soup of caramelized fennel there and think I felt as contented as a sated infant afterwards. Perhaps such calming effects also come to stressed service providers in Frankfurt.
Vegetables and South Fruits
Catarina Gurreri
Kleinmarkthalle, Stand 106
Hasengasse 7
60311 Frankfurt am Main
Telephone: 069-20581
Fax: 069-20581
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 8am-1pm, Sat 8am-4pm
from Waldemar Thomas