My Container Garden Plants: Fennel

Fennel (Foeniculum vulgare) is a flowering plant from the carrot family (Apiaceae). It is a perennial herb with bright green, featherlike leaves or fronds and yellow flowers that grow in umbels. This herb has a mildly sweet, aromatic, anise-like flavor, and every part of the Fennel is edible. Fennel seeds is a spice used as seasoning. The leaves are often added to soups and sauces for flavor, or as garnishing in salads. The bulb is a vegetable which can be stewed, sautéed, grilled, baked, or eaten raw.



Our Fennel plant is growing beautifully everyday. A couple of new stalks have already blossomed from the bulb since I brought it home. I love cooking with herbs but I have never tried using cooking with Fennel before. I find lots of recipes online that make use of the Fennel bulb, but  since ours is planted in a pot, there's only a single bulb and not enough space to grow new bulbs. And of course, I wouldn't want to cook that bulb yet and lose my Fennel plant but I tried looking for recipes that make use of the stalks and fronds and found these:

Fennel fronds pesto and baked Fennel stalks {notderpie}
Fennel soup puree {zesterdaily}
Candiedn Fennel stalks and Fennel frond salt {localkitchenblog}
Trout Fillets With Sautéed Fennel Stalks and Fronds {Wall Street Journal}

Have yet to try out these recipes soon, but they seem really good. So tell me, have you cooked with Fennel fronds and stalks before? Do you have a recipe you'd like to share?