Pasta with Fennel

The sweet, familiar combination of pine nuts and currants offsets the mild anise bitterness of fresh fennel here. Omit the pasta from this Sicilian sauce and you’ll have a good vegetable dish.

If you can find the herb fennel (those living in southern California can find it wild, and many gardeners use it as an ornamental), use a few of the feathery parts of it’s stalks in place of the tops of the bulb. If you cannot, add the fennel seeds for stronger flavor.