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What to do with that lovely fennel

Olive oil
3 shallots or one medium onion, chopped
crushed red pepper, to taste
2 fennel bulbs
6 cloves of garlic, pressed
28 ounce can tomatoes, with juice
2 15 ounce cans of small white beans, rinsed and drained
1/2 teaspoon of salt, or to taste
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar (optional)
7 sun-dried tomatoes (optional)

If using, cut the sun-dried tomatoes into strips and place in a small bowl. Pour boiling water over them to cover and let soak while you're doing the other preparations.

Prepare the fennel by cutting off the green stalks and feathery tops. Set the bulb, root side down on a cutting board and slice vertically between the bases of the stalks so that you end up with one stalk base on each half.

Check out the core of the fennel bulb. Did you get a big core? You have won! Much of the flavor is in the core. When the core is cooked till tender it has a really lovely taste and texture.

Place the halves of the bulb cut side down on the cutting board and slice thinly, about 1/4 inch or less, lengthwise (with the grain of the stalk). Leave the stalky parts attached to the core. It may be my imagination, but it seems like the parts attached to the core retain the anise flavor better.

In a large pot, saute the onion or shallots in the olive oil with the red pepper and salt over medium-high heat. Once the onions soften, add the fennel and cook for a few minutes more. When the fennel appears to soften a bit, then add the garlic. Once the garlic starts to sizzle, add the tomatoes, beans and vinegar (if using) and sun-dried tomatoes with their soaking liquid (if using). (I actually forgot the vinegar last time I made this, and it still came out tasty, so that's why the vinegar is optional.)

Let simmer over medium-low heat till the fennel is tender and easy to bite through or cut with the side of a fork. This may take a while. 45 minutes? The time may depend on the toughness of your fennel and the thickness of your slices. And, I suppose, your teeth.

Adjust salt.

Serve however you like. What is this dish anyway? Serve over pasta or polenta, and it's a sauce. Eat it from a bowl with some nice bread on the side and it's a stew. Garnish it with grated Parmesan and/or the feathery leaves of the fennel stalks and it's gourmet.

Because of the dearth of good fennel, I haven't been able to experiment with this dish as much as I'd like. The licorice taste is mellowed, or made way too faint, depending on how much you like that taste, by cooking. Next time I get some fennel, I'm going to make this again and try adding one to one-and-a-half teaspoons of ground or whole (or a mixture of the two) fennel seeds to see if I can get a stronger licorice taste.

Now, what are you going to do with the leftover stalks? I've found that when cooked, they have no flavor at all. They are edible and taste pretty good raw, if you like that celery texture. Just google your way to the recipes and scoff at those which tell you to discard the core. The core is the best part, but it does take some cooking.