Anything to Know....
Like many people, I'm sure, I often run across one of those nagging questions which lurks about the back of my head for weeks, or even years, always wanting for an answer, but never quite urgent enough to bubble up to my concious mind when I actually have the opportunity to find an answer (one of the reasons, incidentally, that I find the Glenn Mitchell show's "everything you wanted to know" Fridays so interesting — I often find myself having wondered about the same questions that people call in with, but never got around to looking them up).
This afternoon, while watching The Apartment and flipping through a Moosewood cookbook (during a wonderfully cool and drizzly autumn day, I might add), I came across a reference to fennel.
Immediately I perked up a little, realizing that some confusion about fennel seed is one of the long time questions I've just described. Are fennel and anise the same thing? I'd kept this thought on my low-priority wonderment back burner for a long time. I know what they taste like (rather pleasant if you like licorice), have noticed that they look about the same, have owned spice jars of one or the other many times in the past, seen recipes which use them (often interchangeably), and so on. Because of all the substitutions of them in recipes and ingredient lists, I'd started to seriously question whether these little seeds are actually the clever Clark Kent and Superman of the spice world (yes, it was actually anise, but we didn't recognize him because of the glasses). The suspicion increased as I noticed that most spice brands in the supermarket will either carry anise or fennel, but I couldn't find any that carried both simultaneously.
Today, aided by my cookbook, along with some subsequent web research, I found my answer. I wasn't just wrong in my suspicion — I was very wrong. Anise and fennel are not one, and not even two, but at least five different spices. I'm still reeling a little from the discovery, and if it weren't for the species names, I wouldn't have believed it.
Thinking back on it, I think it was actually a label for Florence Fennel calling it "Fennel/Anise Bulb" that caused the confusion in the first place.
Anyway, one less mystery on the stack. Oddly, I feel only mildly more educated, but it's still a good thing to know, I suppose. As I remember my other questions, perhaps I'll post them up here to see if anyone has any ideas, but as I mentioned before, I never seem to remember them when I actually have a chance of finding the answer. . . .
This afternoon, while watching The Apartment and flipping through a Moosewood cookbook (during a wonderfully cool and drizzly autumn day, I might add), I came across a reference to fennel.
Immediately I perked up a little, realizing that some confusion about fennel seed is one of the long time questions I've just described. Are fennel and anise the same thing? I'd kept this thought on my low-priority wonderment back burner for a long time. I know what they taste like (rather pleasant if you like licorice), have noticed that they look about the same, have owned spice jars of one or the other many times in the past, seen recipes which use them (often interchangeably), and so on. Because of all the substitutions of them in recipes and ingredient lists, I'd started to seriously question whether these little seeds are actually the clever Clark Kent and Superman of the spice world (yes, it was actually anise, but we didn't recognize him because of the glasses). The suspicion increased as I noticed that most spice brands in the supermarket will either carry anise or fennel, but I couldn't find any that carried both simultaneously.
Today, aided by my cookbook, along with some subsequent web research, I found my answer. I wasn't just wrong in my suspicion — I was very wrong. Anise and fennel are not one, and not even two, but at least five different spices. I'm still reeling a little from the discovery, and if it weren't for the species names, I wouldn't have believed it.
- Anise, the seed of the Pimpinella anisum plant
- Star Anise, from the fruit of the Illicium verum tree (I'd always pretty much assumed star anise was different, but the confirmation is nice)
- Anise Hyssop, the foliage of the Agastache foeniculum plant
- Fennel Seed, from the Foeniculum vulgare plant
- Fennel Bulb (or Florence Fennel), from the Foeniculum dulce plant
- (and finally, to prevent any other confusion) Licorice, the root of the Glycyrrihiza glabra plant
Thinking back on it, I think it was actually a label for Florence Fennel calling it "Fennel/Anise Bulb" that caused the confusion in the first place.
Anyway, one less mystery on the stack. Oddly, I feel only mildly more educated, but it's still a good thing to know, I suppose. As I remember my other questions, perhaps I'll post them up here to see if anyone has any ideas, but as I mentioned before, I never seem to remember them when I actually have a chance of finding the answer. . . .