Anise vs. Fennel

I added a new spice to my diet yesterday - hooray!

Technically I added 2 by accident.  So much for one at a time, but so far so good, and delicious!

The result?  Delicious meatballs!

Did you know that anise and fennel are NOT the same thing?  Anise seeds are small, and fennel seeds are bigger.  We do not eat the anise plant, we do eat the bulb of the fennel plant.  The flavors are similar, but not quite the same - I always thought I was imagining a difference until I read about it yesterday!  Anise is a little sweeter with an up front kick, while fennel seeds are a softer fuller flavor that isn't quite as in-yo-face.

I love italian sausage, and I've been dreaming about the day that my diet can accommodate a homemade sausage flavored dish.  For my first try, I set out to make up some meatballs.  I was originally aiming for an italian sausage flavor, but the result was quite different since I forgot to add a few crucial italian flavors.  But what a nice meatball I created!

I started by toasting up some anise seeds, and as I was looking at them I thought, boy, these don't smell like sausage to me.  And they look so tiny... so I looked through my spice drawer and found the jar labeled "fennel seeds", and low and behold they were bigger and looked more like the things I see in italian sausage.  So I added some of those to the pan too.  This recipe would absolutely be fine with just one of them, though I do think including so much anise seed made them a little bit sweeter than they would have been with just fennel seed.

Chicken, Garlic & Fennel Meatballs

• around a tsp of anise or fennel seeds or both
• 2 cloves of garlic
• salt and pepper (sorry, i didn't measure)
• 1/2 of a small zucchini, seeded
• around 1/2 cup of pureed butternut squash (or you could just use more zucchini)
• 1 pound of ground chicken
• around 1/4 cup of coconut or olive oil (I think I used olive)

1. Put the seeds in a pan for a couple of minutes, browning them up slightly.
2. Line a baking pan with foil or silpat.
3. Pulse the toasted seeds in a food processor or bullet type mixer until you have a powder.
4. Add everything except the chicken and chop well.
5. Place the chicken in a bowl, mix in your pureed flavors.
6. With wet hands, form 1" meatballs.  You may need to re-wet your hands several times to keep the mixture from sticking to your hands.
7. Bake at 325 for about 35 minutes.  I checked by inserting a toothpick to gauge the resistence, and then cutting in half with a knife to make sure they were cooked through.  (My oven runs hot, so they may require a slightly longer baking time.  I wouldn't recommend a higher temperature or they might dry out.)

These did NOT taste like italian sausage.  The garlic and anise flavors were very strong, but delicious.  The vegetables helped keep them moist, and I couldn't taste the chicken.  The kids LOVED them!  We basically ate them straight up, but they'd be great as a snack with dipping sauce or over pasta (I served with tortellini for the kids, but they both devoured the meatballs on their own first).