One of my favorite vegetables is fennel. I feel mildly embarrassed about this, the way I do when some radio-friendly chestnut comes around in shuffle mode on iTunes (think “Right Here Right Now”). The 90s are over, right, fennel?

Not around here. When fennel’s in the pan, there is no other place I wanna be. I cook it a few different ways, but the other night I made caramelized fennel to go with duck hash. Like most food writers, I cringe instinctively at the word “caramelized,” which is both overused and somewhat inaccurate, since caramelization is something that happens to sugar, and generally what people are talking about is browning, a reaction that involves sugar and protein. Anyway, in the case of fennel, it really does feel like you’re making caramel, since fennel alone will produce a gooey and slightly sweet glaze.

Fennel is best cooked a lot or not at all. A shaved fennel salad is delicious. But I usually cook it. In this case, I trimmed away the stalks and thinly sliced the fennel parallel to the thick side of the bulb. Probably I should have dug out my mandoline for this. Mandolines are also kind of 90s. Then I trimmed any large pieces of core in the slices. Then I tossed them in a pan with some olive oil, butter, and salt over medium-high. After they started to brown, I turned the heat down a little bit. Totally cooking time was probably 15 or 20 minutes, during which I flipped the fennel occasionally so every surface would have an opportunity to brown.

Fennel is pretty expensive, but one fat bulb is plenty for two people, or for three people if one of them doesn’t like fennel. (Hi, Iris!)

The fennel revolution: it’s already passed you by!