July and August is when you can find the most wonderful ingredient growing wild in your garden, nearby parks, even roadsides, for free!

The ingredient I’m talking about is wild fennel – not the big bulbs, known as Florence fennel, that you see in supermarkets. This is not an ingredient sold in shops, but I have seen wild fennel flowers sold in Polish shops from June to August, so worth checking out your local. You can buy as ‘fennel pollen’, which is a dried version from specialist spice suppliers, but it’s very expensive, so make the most of your fresh supply.

This is the ingredient, which contains the compound ‘anetole’, used to make aniseed drinks like Pastis and Pernod. It’s very much a Marmite flavour – you either love it or hate it.

What it looks like

It has an umbelliflor shape – like a little umbrella. This plant tends to self-seed, so I’ll find random tall stalks topped with yellow flowers. The flowers are fantastic, tiny and intensely aniseedy and are sometimes known as ‘The spice of angels’. When the flower has disappeared, you will have fresh green fennel seeds. You can leave both the flowers and the seeds to dry or use fresh. I also pickle the seeds.

Although it is fiddly to separate the seeds and flowers from the stalks, it is a worthwhile pursuit for the flavour. Sit yourself down, bung something on Netflix or a podcast and get to work.

Today I picked off the fennel seeds, flooded them with water and froze them in a plastic bag. I’ll use them in bread and to flavour basmati rice.

Fennel seeds are used in India as breath fresheners at the end of a meal.

How I use it

On potato salad:

Potato Salad with fennel flowers

Using fennel flowers and fronds can replace dill

Course Picnic dish, Sides, Starters

Cuisine Scandinavian

Keyword Fennel flowers, Fennel pollen, Potato salad

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 kilo salad potatoes such as Charlottes. Peeled or unpeeled.
50 g salted butter
300 ml creme fraiche, full fat
Sea salt
White pepper
large handful fennel flowers or 2 tsps of fennel pollen

Instructions

Boil the potatoes in salted water for 20 minutes or until tender. Don’t overboil as they will fall apart.
Drain, butter them and let them cool until you can touch them easily.
Then mix them with plenty of creme fraiche, sea salt and white pepper. Pick the little flowers off the fennel stems and mix those in too. Save some for decoration.

In pickle soup:

One of my best recipes this year, inspired by a trip to Krakow, is pickle soup.

Pickle Soup

For this, go to your local Polish shop and buy the lactose-fermented cucumber dill pickles that they often sell in plastic bags in the fridge section. These pickles aren't pickled in vinegar.

I tend to start soups the day before as I like them to 'mature' overnight. So I made it Friday, added the sour cream just before serving on Saturday, then added water and more pickles to make it bigger, and serve it Sunday.

Course Lunch, Soup, Starters

Cuisine Polish

Keyword Black Bean Soup, Pickle soup, Polish pickle soup, Vegetarian soup

Ingredients

5 tbsp vegetable or olive oil
2 leeks, white part, chopped small
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 parsnip, topped and tailed, peeled, chopped small
2 carrots, topped, tailed, peeled, chopped small
2 sticks celery, chopped small
5 all spice whole
5 juniper berries
3 tbsp vegetable stock powder
1.5 litres more or less of water
5 medium potatoes, peeled, chopped small
250 g sour lacto fermented pickles, chopped into slices
900 ml sour cream

Instructions

Heat up the oil in the large stock pot
On a medium heat, add leeks, fry until golden, then add the garlic, parsnip, carrots, celery, all spice, juniper
Add the vegetable stock, stir for a few minutes
Then add the potato. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes, until cooked.
Add the pickles
Just before serving add the sour cream.
Garnish with flat parsley, dill, more pickles, or wild fennel flowers.

On salmon or smoked salmon:

The aniseed flavours of fennel are a perfect complement for fish.

I scatter the flowers on top of BBQ salmon

Sprinkle a few in the packets when I do fish en papillote

Use as a flavouring when curing salmon for gravad lax or smoked salmon.

How to cure and smoke salmon

You can just cure the salmon, which is basically Gravad Lax or you can then go onto smoke it. For smoking you will need some kind of smoker. I use a Big Green Egg, which is a ceramic bbq with a lid, and a small smoking device such as a Pro Q smoker placed inside.

Only smoke fish when the weather is cool. Otherwise the summer heat cooks the salmon. This is cold smoking, so you don't want that.

If smoking, do not have the fish scaled. You need a thicker skin for smoking.

Course Appetizer, Main Course, Pescetarian

Cuisine Scandinavian

Keyword Fish, Home curing, Home smoking, How to cure and smoke salmon

Serves 15

Ingredients

2 sides good quality salmon, pinned, boned, fat cut off.
3 cups thick salt such as Sel Grise or Kosher salt
3 cups caster sugar
3 cups mixed herbs of your choice and or fennel flowers

Instructions

Mix the salt and sugar.
Cover the bottom of a dish long enough to lay out the salmon, with half the sugar/salt mixture.
Chop all the fresh herbs I had in the food processor (mostly tarragon, some basil, dill, thyme, and parsley).
Spread half the herbs on the salt/sugar mix in the dish.
Lay the filets, skin side down on the salt/sugar mix.
Cover the top of the filets with the herb mix and salt/sugar mix.
Place another dish on top, weighing it down (with cans or jars)
Leave in the fridge for 12 hours,
After 12 hours, take off the weighted dish,
Scrape away the salt/sugar/herb mix to one side and drain off some off the liquid
Turn over the filets (you will notice they are stiff now) and cover the exposed side with the reserved herb/sugar/salt mix.
Replace the weighted dish and leave for another 12 hours.
After a 24 hour cure (although I left mine for 48 hours so I guess it doesn't matter if you do it a bit longer), remove the filets and wash off the mixture.
Pat dry with a non fluffy tea towel.

For smoking:

The idea behind cold smoking is that you have a small flame burning up the wood which never gets very hot. If it gets too hot, it cooks the salmon, which you want to avoid.
If you have a posh smoking cupboard then it's much easier. Follow the instructions that came with the device.
Using the Pro-Q, which is like a wire maze which you fill with sawdust in the wood of your choice, underneath which is a tea light which burns the sawdust at a low heat. A Pro-Q is a cheaper way of smoking at home.
It can be a bit hit and miss. Sometimes you've lit the sawdust and hours later you go to check and it's gone out/burnt out meaning your fish isn't smoked. I found that making sure the sawdust is bone dry (I leave it for half an hour on the top of the Aga) and ground very fine means it will work better. I also traced a line with my finger tip to guide the flame from the candle. I used a tea light that is slightly taller than usual so that it reaches the sawdust. Look for the small stream of smoke coming out of the lid of your bbq.
A Pro Q device lasts about six hours. You will probably have to do at least 2 if not 3 sessions of six hours, depending on how smokey you want the fish.

Pickled fennel seeds:

I make a simple pickle for fennel seeds which I then use in bread or crisp breads.

Pickled fennel seeds

Course Pickles

Keyword Pickled fennel seeds

Ingredients

1 bay leaf
1 cup white wine vinegar
2 tbsp kosher salt
2 tbsp sugar
1/4 cup fennel seeds

Instructions

Bring bay leaf, vinegar, salt, sugar, and 1 cup water to a simmer in a small saucepan, stirring to dissolve salt and sugar.
Add seeds to pickling liquid and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until tender (they should yield easily between your front teeth), 30–45 minutes. Let seeds cool in liquid; transfer to an airtight container, cover, and chill.
Store pickled seeds in their liquid in the refrigerator up to 3 months.

Fennel Flowers and seeds- uses and recipes

What it looks like