Finocchio

As well as using the bulb as a vegetable, both the leaves and seeds of the fennel plant are widely used in Italy, where it can be found growing wild in the South beside country roads. Its flavour is less sweet than that of the very similar aniseed, to which it is related. The seeds are longer and a distinctive pale green when dried.

Fennel is popular in the cooking of Tuscany and the South, to flavour pork dishes and the famous Tuscan salami called finocchiona, as well as other fresh and preserved sausages. In Puglia and the South it is much used to make taralli, the local savoury biscuits, as well as bread and sweet biscuits.