Macaroni with Fennel, Pancetta and Mushrooms

Over the last ten years, a few vegetable stalls in different fresh produce markets across Mumbai (and every other major metropolis in our India that is Bharat) have begun sourcing and stocking ‘foreign’ ingredients. Ranging from herbs- if you sing parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, they will offer you all four; to fruit- kiwi, dragon fruit, rambutan

Rambutan

, Granny Smith apples, Thai sweet tamarind; through vegetables specific to cuisines- Thai brinjal, galangal, basil, kaffir lime, kaffir lime leaves; Pakchoy and Inoki Mushrooms for those keen on the Orient; or cherry tomatoes, new potatoes, assorted mushrooms, wide range of lettuce, arugula (rocket) if you are planning on cooking European style.
A conspicuous absentee in this delightful and distinguished line-up, at least for me, was the fragrant white bulb of the herb Foeniculum Vulgare, the fennel

Fennel bulb

. It is

scarcely foreign. No Indian home will be complete without fennel seed: saunf, to be used by turns as post-meal mouth freshener, cooking ingredient (for instance as one of Bengal’s Paanch Foran) or home remedy, particularly for disorderly stomachs. And yet. Having enjoyed its sweet, aromatic character in soups, sauces and salads while travelling in foreign parts, and more recently even in Swadesh, I’d long hoped for a chance to experiment with it at home. Which finally happened yesterday at a wonderful new food shop in Parel’s Palladium Mall.

The protagonist having been identified, a quick casting call around the refrigerator and the provisions cupboard brought together the supporting cast and we were ready to roll. Without further ado, here’s the recipe that emerged:
Preparation time: 20 minutes (but I’m slow and you might get it done quicker)
Cooking time: 20 minutes (I try to slow cook everything)
Ingredients:
Fennel: 1 large bulb (trim and retain a fourth of the shoots too)
Pancetta (or other spicy Italian sausage, I just had this at home): 100 g

(Shakaharis will evidently leave this out and could consider adding a ½ tsp each of ground nutmeg, cinnamon and clove to add back some spice and body)
Mushrooms: 200 g (I had a fresh mushroom packet but you can reconstitute and equivalent quantity of mixed wild mushrooms and will be rewarded with more taste+ the water you reconstitute them in works very well as stock)
Spinach- good old Palak is perfect: 1 bunch
Onions: 2-3 medium sized
Garlic: I used half a medium sized bulb but this is a matter of taste
Chicken or veg stock: 2 cups (but feel free just to use hot water, the ingredients are flavourful enough even without this)
Oil: I keep looking for interesting olive oils and this recipe used a Portuguese Extra-Virgin but I would as happily use a refined sunflower or kardi or rice bran oil too
Chop onion. Crush garlic. I do not chop garlic. Somehow, a bit of pounding in the mortar and pestle gets the essential oils of this bulb flowing like chopping never can. When I’m lazy, which is most times, I don’t even bother to peel it. The bulb goes in, chhilka and all. Trust me, no one will know in the end. Finely chop fennel bulb and about 6 inches of the lovely green shoots attached. Slice mushrooms vertically. This is really a matter of the visual aesthetics. I just like mushrooms look mushroom shaped in the finished prep but if you want to cube them, be my guest. Never, EVER julienne a mushroom. You want it show up as a taste bomb in every other morsel, not become a part of the cosmic background radiation. Finely chop pancetta. I sliced it and then cut it up with kitchen scissors. Tear the palak leaves by hand just removing the hard, whitish stalks at the bottom.
Put big pot of salted water to boil for the pasta. Time to start on the sauce on the other burner. Use a heavy bottomed, lidded deep pan. Pour in a generous splash of oil and immediately add the crushed garlic. Stir until the garlic just begins to sputter. Toss in the chopped pancetta and, about a minute later, the onion. Cover and let rest for a 2-3 minutes. Good quality non-stick heavy bottomed pans will ensure the ingredients don’t stick and burn, just start cooking nicely. When the onion turns kind of translucent, add the fennel and about a half of its chopped shoots. The rest will be required later. Give the whole lot a vigorous stirring and cover. When you uncover the next time, your kitchen should be filled with a blast of richly aromatic steam that will announce your plans to the gharbaar and get their salivary glands firing. By now your cook-pot water should be boiling and you need to drop the pasta in- you know the drill. Now add the ‘shrooms, which will cook in another 3-4 minutes. Now pour in stock, or plain old hot water. Another couple minutes and toss in the spinach. The idea is for it just to wilt into the sauce and this will take no more than 2 minutes, after all by this time, sauce is boiling and bubbling enough to please the most fussy witch from Macbeth or Hogwarts.
Drain pasta preserving half a cup of water to add to sauce if it has thickened too much. Place in serving dish, then pour over your fragrant sauce. Dress with sprinkling of fennel shoot and as much grated Parmesan as you dare. Buon appetito!