I'll be the first to admit that fennel is an intimidating vegetable. A dense knot of layers with a good ten inches of greenery fuzzing about like a Mardi-Gras headdress? (Being from the Midwest, I like my vegetables homely and unassuming, thank you very much.) All that pageantry, and then you discover that fennel just tastes like black licorice. Um, no thank you. Until this spring, fennel was brooding down at the very bottom of my list of favorite vegetables, right next to—well, to be honest, there was nothing next to it. I thought there was nothing quite so bad as fennel.
