Try fennel: It's like dessert during dinner

Suddenly, my daughter loves fennel, and I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s because she has persistent allergies, which lead to semi-permanent nausea; fennel is, after all, reputed to help with digestion.

Or maybe the anti-inflammatory qualities of fennel are what she likes; perhaps the fennel reduces the swelling in her sinuses. 

Then again, maybe she just likes fennel because, when roasted, it becomes tender and almost sweet — like dessert, during dinner.

I prefer to eat fennel in salads, sliced paper thin and tossed with a little olive oil and lemon juice. I eat it so often that I no longer am aware that it has the licorice flavor that cookbooks describe. To me, fennel just tastes crisp and clean and fresh. It reminds me of thinly sliced artichoke hearts.

There isn’t much data online about the nutritional differences between eating fennel raw or cooked. Nutrition Web sites do say that fennel is a pretty good source of vitamin C and fiber (although a cup of fennel doesn’t provide even a quarter of your daily recommended intake of either); and they say that what fennel is really good at is preventing cancer. It has a phytonutrient called anethole that’s believed to keep tumors from growing.

If you’ve never eaten or cooked fennel before, the bulb and it’s fernlike top can be a little off-putting. When you get your fennel bulb home, chop off the feathery top and discard it (or use it as a garnish on beet soup, really yummy). And trim off the bottom of the bulb, which gets a little brown when it’s been exposed to air.

If you’re going to use your fennel in a salad, slice it as thin as you can along the short side, so you get ovals of bulb (which willl come off in shards, not full circles) that you can scatter in with your lettuce. You can also mix thin slices of fennel in with cole slaw.

Fennel is also a fantastic crudite and goes well with all kinds of dip, including plain salt and pepper. When you eat fennel “naked� like this, then you really do notice the licorice flavor.

If you want to roast your fennel bulb, preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Cut the bulb lengthwise, so that you get triangular chunks of fennel that are held together at the bottom by the base of the bulb. Toss the slices with a little olive oil and some coarse salt and freshly ground pepper. Roast until tender; be sure to turn the slices from time to time so they don’t burn on one side.