Wild fennel and cardoon soup
Ingredients:
- Wild fennel (2 bunches)
- Wild cardoons (400 g)
- Ditalini (300 g)
- Tomato sauce (1 cup)
- Olive oil (2 tbsp)
- Salt
- Water (2.5 L)
Method:
At the table
This soup gives wild fennel the leading voice, with cardoons bringing a gentle bitterness and short pasta making a complete bowl. It serves four. Allow 40 minutes for cleaning the vegetables and about 50 minutes for cooking; the patient work is in removing the tough cardoon fibres, not in complicated seasoning.
Stories around the pot
Cardoons appear on Sicilian Christmas tables and at the Tavolate di San Giuseppe, as Visit Sicily records. That custom belongs to the vegetable’s wider story, rather than proving a feast-day origin for this particular soup. Here the pleasure is quieter: fennel perfume, a little bitterness, a bowl that asks for a spoon. Cleaning the cardoons well is a small act of hospitality; your guests should enjoy the flavour without wrestling with the fibres.
Before you start
Use vegetables obtained from a knowledgeable food supplier. Strip the cardoons of their hard parts and strings, trim the fennel, wash both well and cut them into pieces. Set out the tomato sauce and pasta. The cup of sauce is the book’s household measure, with no exact volume specified.
At the stove
Blanch the cardoons in plenty of boiling water for about 10 minutes. Drain and transfer to a second pot containing 2.5 litres of boiling water. Add the prepared wild fennel, tomato sauce and a little salt, then simmer for 30 minutes. Taste a piece of cardoon: it should yield comfortably to the bite before you add the pasta.
Finish and serve
Add the ditalini and cook until tender, stirring occasionally. Finish with the 2 tablespoons of olive oil and serve hot. Let the fennel’s scent rise from the bowl before the first spoonful; this recipe needs neither an elaborate topping nor a heavy sauce to make its character felt.