I can’t stop thinking about fennel. There is leftover caramelized fennel + lemon orzo sitting in the big green Dutch Oven on my hob that I earlier today to warm my drafty flat. There is a dusty yellow and white painted plate with a fennel flower Sidney got me from New Zealand. There is fennel pollen I saw on the menu at Leo’s in Clapton the other day. There are daily musings about fennel seeds, even while slightly hungover after a night in the pub after another move to another place but somehow it feels more real, even more like home than the last time I had a home in London. I love fennel and it loves me are the words I write at the top of the page, and ode to one of the many loves of my life, my palms resting in a position away from my laptop so perfect to crush their seeds into the imaginary stew in front of me.
My love affair with fennel began with an orzo dish by Ottolenghi, with prawns and marinated feta. I remember it so vividly as one of the first things Sidney and I made together in my too-nice kitchen in Stratford, something comfortable in the way we moved through the kitchen together. I had loved previously, fennel that is, through trips to 4 different grocery stores to find its bulbs for sausage and fennel pastas for my family while in high school, in fennel, orange, and olive salads with Lucy on hot summer days in Greenwich Park, and now, poured between the heels of my hand, crushed fennel seeds to bloom in the pot, along with slices of, chilli flakes, and thin orange peels, which Sidney and I would alternate between the pot and the rims of our negroni glasses, my love for fennel bloomed into something real, an extension of myself.
Fennel, according to indistinct ancient lore from places near and far, was a medicine of its own - not just in the sachets of tea to soothe the mind and stomach but the ‘herb of the snakes’, known to rub their eyes against it to sharpen their sight. Decisiveness is what comes to mind with I think of fennel seeds - maybe because their fragrance and soft taste of licorice whispered, “I know” to me as I tasted them mixed with the salty chunks of feta and hints of chilli and olive oil smuggled over from my ujatz back in Poljana drizzled on top of our creation. I remember sitting on the balcony of what felt like (and still does) a balcony into dystopia where I lived at the time and blew on my spoon between bites, and felt something shift in myself, something that I didn’t think would ever be a thing at the table, that my decisiveness could be appreciated and loved, that my opinion, my love of fennel seeds, is a nice thing about me, that this, the sharing of a meal with this person so new to me was something significant.
I have meditated on this during the first days and weeks of this year. I travelled to Basingstoke for my residency and found myself getting groceries and buying my own fennel seeds, without even thinking about it, along with a bag of oranges to try and peel in onefelt swoop, an ode of luck my friend and temporary high school enemy told me in the hallway once, and has stuck with me as my love for oranges has expanded into a daily ritual of having them as part of breakfast. I came back and dived back into my cookbooks, finding my way around the new kitchen, knowing to turn right on my road to head toward the high street, that Aldi is there and Asda is there, but the Turkish grocer at the foot of my road is actually the place to go for lemons and limes and labneh, and they smile at me now, as I have become a part of their regular crowd of customers, offering me kesice like the ones my Baba would bring to the house every Saturday. I moved my spices in my cabinet in the houseshare from side to side, ultimately settling on a box that sits above the cabinet itself, to pick them out whenever I need them, acquiring things like curry leaves and mustard seeds and boxes of szechuan peppercorns in soft wicker boxes from Sidney as part of a Christmas gift a while back.
There is something to be said about the people your life that make you feel like you can speak your mind, that I can share what I want to have for dinner and we can laugh like silly kids walking around the grocery store with tubs of olives and a bottle of wine in our basket, a feeling of love so whole you no longer have to fear it, only let yourself be present in the moment. I throw artichokes into the basket with glee because I know we will savour every moment with them, whipping melted butter with lemon juice to vigorously dip our leaves into, as if we’ve never had anything so good in our lives. That I can get excited about a dish I may not make for months but the thought of cooking means many things, a series of blissful kitchen embraces and podcasts in the background and cheers-ing glasses because it is just so good to be here, with you, moj ljubavi.
When I think of these past few years of my life I think of many things, the beginnings of my career that has taken form in many ways, a life that has been enjoyed through cups of coffee and inky pens dancing across the crossword, I have found myself in many ways, not mistakenly through my little glass jar of fennel seeds, whispering "i love you" from across the kitchen as I toss them into our pan for dinner.
Beautiful ❤️