Fiddlehead Fever: Succulent Scrolls of Spring
The first of May is celebrated around Vermont in many guises, from flower baskets to the first lighting of the barbecue grill to organized labor demonstrations. But no May Day festivity quite combines the sense of magic of the season with independent Green Mountain spirit of living off the land as an annual pilgrimage to pick fiddleheads. These deliciously coiled new sprouts of the ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris), named for their resemblance to the scroll at the tuning-peg end of a violin fingerboard, can be picked and eaten in Vermont with patriotic pride: they are our official state vegetable.
Fiddleheads grow in alluvial and swamp muck soils from the far northern reaches of tundra to the bottomlands of Virginia, but folks in Vermont and Maine (where some call them ‘fiddlegreens’) have a special affinity for these elegant spring sprouts, which share the early season with such other wild-crafted delicacies as early dandelion greens and the first shoots of wild garlic. Restaurants across Vermont pay good money to local pickers to put fiddleheads on their plates beside the earliest spring-caught trout, possibly more to see the looks on tourists’ faces as they pick curiously at the strange green stems than for purposes of actually serving a nutritious, delicious vegetable.
Fiddleheads have their own unique taste, but it’s comfortingly similar to a good green bean or nice fresh asparagus. While they can be eaten raw as a crunchy antipasto, do be warned that the Center for Disease Control has connected a few outbreaks of food-borne illnesses with raw fiddlehead consumption. This is most likely due to residues of pollutants from the rivers whose bottomlands the fiddlehead inhabits. No reports of health problems have been associated with washed and well-cooked fiddleheads.
True fiddlehead afficionados hold their favorite fiddle-picking spots as safe-guarded secrets, protecting them with the same possessiveness as a Hobbit exhibits over his mushroom patch (and fiddleheaders have been known to keep a weather eye out for the occasional early morel as well). Fortunately, there are plenty such spots to go around along the banks of any of Vermont’s major waterways, from the White to the Black, the Otter to the Poultney. Look for last year’s ostrich fern bases inside bends in a river, where March flooding has overwashed a sandy island and ancient willows drape their flowering wands in verdant curtains over budding pillows of dutchman’s breeches. Or cheat and keep an eye out for where people are suddenly parking their cars and dashing off with buckets – the landlubber’s equivalent of fishing for runs of blues by watching where the other boats are clustering.
Pick fiddleheads by simply snapping off the curls which have cleared the top of last year’s fern base cluster, but have not yet unfurled and are still wrapped in their papery brown scale covering. Never pick all of the fiddleheads from any one fern crown; leave some to unfurl and gather energy back into the roots to support next year’s crop. Walk gently around the fern bases, and try not to pick in a spot that other people have already heavily picked over.
When you get your fiddleheads home, you’ll need to remove those papery brown scales that cover the overwintering fern crown. There doesn’t seem to be any substitute to sitting on the front porch and picking these off by hand, one by one, but I have had some luck submersing the fiddleheads in a bowl of cold water. I let them soak for about fifteen minutes, then place the bowl in the sink and let more cold water flow gently into it, allowing the brown scales to simply float away. Sort of. At least some do. Then you still have to pick the rest off, so suit yourself.
If you want more elegant looking fiddleheads, while picking off the covering, you can rub off the small leaves that may have begun to sprout out the sides, revealing a clearer spiral shape; you can also take a sharp knife and put a clean edge on the bottom stems, which may darken slightly where they were broken.
As with all food wildcrafting, do exercise caution. There is a slight danger of mistaking the edible fiddlehead ferns for other fern shoots like those of the Bracken Fern, which are known to be carcinogenic. However, no fern but the edible fiddleheads has the distinct papery brown wrapping; most ferns are either smooth or have fuzz and fur. And should you make a mistaken identification, one taste should clue you in: most other ferns are intensely bitter and acerbic on the tongue. If you are not completely confident of your plant identification skills, hook up with a skilled fiddleheader, bring along a fern field guide, or buy your fiddleheads at an early farmers market or your natural foods store – which saves you the trouble of getting that brown papery stuff off.
Your fiddleheads will taste their best if you cook them as soon as possible after picking. As soon as you give up and admit defeat on getting all those papery scales off, get a pot of salted water boiling. Drop the fiddleheads into the salted water (if you put them in first then bring the water up to boil, they’ll overcook and be mushy). If you are going to use the fiddleheads in a dish requiring additional cooking – a quiche, soup, or in canning – five minutes ought to be about right. If you are going to eat them out of the pot or marinade them, you’ll probably need closer to ten minutes of cooking time.
Marinated Fiddleheads, Fresh or Canned
The simplest way to enjoy fiddleheads is to saute up some garlic in butter while they are cooking in the boiling salted water. Drain the fiddleheads well, then toss them with the butter, garlic, and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Or mix up a good fresh Italian-style salad dressing with olive oil, cider vinegar, and fresh herbs to taste. Amply drench the cooked fiddleheads in the dressing and let them marinade for a few hours before serving, or pack them into pint canning jars with approximately one-half inch headspace and process in a boiling water bath canner for ten minutes. Serve marinated fiddleheads at room temperature, on their own or over pasta or rice.
Blue Cheese Fiddlehead Crepes
My favorite, more elaborate way to eat fiddleheads is in blue cheese fiddlehead crepes, which I devised twenty years ago while living on the fiddlehead-rich banks of the White River. All proportions are simply to taste:
Fiddleheads, lightly boiled and drained.
Garlic
Sweet white onion (or wild onion and garlic shoots)
butter
salt
white pepper (fresh ground black pepper may substitute, but not as aesthetically pleasing)
blue stilton, or other strong blue cheese
prepared crepes
prepared white sauce (flour, butter, and sweet cream)
chives
parmesan cheese
Preheat over to 300 degrees. Saute garlic and sweet white onion in butter with salt and white pepper. Toss in the fiddleheads, then crumble in some strong blue cheese such as Blue Stilton. Roll tightly in prepared crepes. Put the rolled crepes, seam side down, in a buttered lasagne pan. Add more crumbled blue cheese to your prepared simple white sauce, and pour over the crepes. and top with fresh chopped chive (or more wild onion and garlic shoots) and parmesan cheese. Cover with foil or a glass lid and bake for 20 to 30 minutes, until they crepes are heated through. Serve with a light rice pilaf, some slices of fresh lemon, and fresh ground pepper.
Fiddlehead Quiche
Fiddleheads can substitute for the asparagus, green beans, or other vegetables in most quiche or cheese pie recipes, and makes a fine gratin with a well-aged Gruyere. This variant of the classic Quiche Lorraine is simple, and works equally well for a hearty breakfast with homefries and toast, or a light dinner with a side soup or salad.
Pastry for 9-inch one-crust pie
6 slices bacon (optional – or substitute vegetarian bacon or tempeh) crisply fried and crumbled
1 cup lightly boiled fiddleheads
3/4 cup shredded Swiss cheese
3/4 cup shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
½ cup finely chopped onion (or slice onion in rounds and saute on low in butter until carmelized)
4 eggs
2 cups cream
3/4 tsp. Salt
½ tsp. Pepper
½ tsp. Cayenne pepper (or, for milder flavor, paprika)
Preheat over to 425 degrees. Prepare pastry. Sprinkle bacon over bottom of pastry-lined plate. Top with half of the cheese, then layer in the fiddleheads and onion, then the second half of the cheese. In a medium mixing bowl with a whisk or hand beater, beat eggs well, then beat in cream and spices. Cook in 425 degree oven for fifteen minutes, then reduce temperature to 300 degrees. (To help avoid browned crust, you can cover the crust edge with a ring of aluminum foil for the first 15 minutes of baking.) Cook approximately 30 minutes more, until a knife inserted half way between edge and center of pie comes out clean. Let stand 10 to 15 minutes before serving.
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