Fiddlehead fern

Fiddlehead refers not to a specific plant but to the general aspect of young, green, unfurled fronds of ferns looking like the curled head of a fiddle, thus circinate vernation.

Also known as the shuttlecock fern, Matteuccia struthiopteris, the Ostrich fern is the most edible species of the fern family. It can grow up to six feet tall and likes to live in places that offer constantly moist soil, such as flood plains. It has a papery sheath around the frond which needs to be peeled before cooking, and it has no fibrous hairs like some other ferns.

Chef Ted makes a soup of fiddleheads puréed with shallots, (chicken) stock, and an herb such as tarragon. At our spring foraging supper he served it with a small Maine crab cake, and garnished it with a few Canadian white violet flowers.

The easiest way for me to find the correct fern is at winter's end or in early spring. I look for the dried, leftover frond that looks like a feather, and I sometimes mark the spot. The Ostrich fern can grow beside other inedible ferns, but the smooth fiddlehead with paper sheath is tell tale. Do not confuse it with the frequently found dried frond of the Sensitive Fern, Onoclea sensibilis, that has little beads running it's length.

ABOUT FIDDLEHEAD PICKING:
There are some who say do not pick a crown clean, rather only 2-3 fiddles from a crown. (The crown is the largish mass protruding from the ground from which the fiddle heads sprout and the underside from which the roots are attached.) They say if you do, the plant will die and/or there will be less fiddle heads the following year. Some old timers say fiddleheads are not as big as they used to be because of over picking.

Consider fiddleheads an endangered delicacy and only pick a few. Be sure to cook them throughly, as they are not ingested well when undercooked, and may even be toxic to some when raw.

Cattails

grab your boots and use your hands
wade in water usually muddy
tasty and so sweet
cattails are a fine treat to eat!

Sung somewhat to the melody of "Sunny Side of the Street" while you contemplate your adventure into a muddy mire to grab lunch.


Not to be confused with water iris which also grow in marshy areas and ponds, cattails have stalks that wrap around one another as opposed to splayed fronds rising from a base.

Once you get to the cattail, straddle it, and peel back the outer layers sliding your hands down the stalk till you reach bottom, which is inevitably under water. Gently snap and pull the cattail out of the water. To prepare, cut off the bottom few inches, which is pale green to white, and peel off this section until you get to the tender nearly all white area.

Now you can make a raw salad of the white shoots or cook them so they magically turn into a "poor man's hearts of palm."

Poach them for about a minute with a little lemon, water, and a dash of sugar and salt. Cool and serve dressed with a citrus vinaigrette.

It is the hearts of cattails we want to recover, the white inner core at the base about 4-5 inches long. If they are invasive in your pond perhaps you want to yank them out--weed and feed of another sort.

There are other uses for cattails, like collecting the golden pollen that oozes from the fat brown "flower." This can be used like "flour" as a coating for fish or fowl before cooking or as a thickening agent. The roots too are edible, though we haven't tried them yet--saving this for another blahg....

Trout Lily

This must be the year of the trout lily, at least if you saw my lawn, you'd think so. Our field lawn is bordered by woods which is where trout lilies like to grow. Eastern trout lily, yellow trout lily, Erythronium americanum, is also known as dogtooth violet or adder's tongue, and their is a white Minnesota sister lily or two.

Our Vermont version has pretty brown speckled basal leaves with a single, slender center stalk sprouting a delicate yellow flower. At first only one small leaf appears from the ground and it takes awhile before another sprouts. It takes several years for a flower to appear, so unless they are as abundant on your property as on ours, take heed in harvesting.

Trout lily corms are worth digging out unless the plant is endangered as is the white Minnesota dwarf trout lily (Erythronium propullans). Digging out the sweet, small fragile corms is not easy, so consider these little white gems a rare delicacy. Larger corms seem to have more starch and are less sweet. We happen to have enough trout lilies to last a lifetime--small and large, but digging them out of stony Vermont soil is a challenge. You can transplant them in the fall to encourage growth in an area where you would like them to spread so you can harvest for all to enjoy.

Now barely mid-May the flowers have gone, but the leaves are still around for picking. Wash well and use them raw in a salad as you can do with the flower heads and corms. You can see how Chef Ted uses some mid-size leaves as a flower petal on his wild leaf salad of our May 3rd post. Here is a link with more information and recipes.

Spring Forage Menu

Had a fabulous romp through Vermont fields and woods for an annual spring forage--or as some prefer to call it--wild crafting. Following is the menu Chef Ted hand crafted from our finds:




Vermont pheasant with wild leaf salad, sherry & citrus vinaigrettes

fiddlehead soup with Maine lobster & crab, and scallop

wood-roasted salmon with sautéed ramps, Japanese knotweed, and potato-ramp pie, sauces of ramp, chive oil, and duck stock

wild ginger cobbler with Japanese knotweed ice cream and candied Japanese knotweed


Lee Jones said of his experience,"We thought it would be mildly amusing but it turned out to be a blast." T'was a beautiful and delicious feast!

This wild leaf salad (pictured) was comprised of leaves from Canadian white violets, trout lilies, dandelion, sedum, plantain, and Ox eye daisy. The violet leaves are sweet and comprised most of the salad. Trout lily, violet, and dandelion flowers are all edible. We shredded the dandelion flower as a sprinkling garnish. Pick only two inch dandelion leaves as larger ones are too bitter. Use sparingly in a salad unless you love bitter. Hearts of cattail (similar to hearts of palm) were poached with lemon and salt, and dressed in a citrus vinaigrette and arranged around the leafy greens.

I'll post more photos and blahg more in detail about specific ingredients in upcoming posts. Meanwhile don't assume you know what to pick by this list of ingredients, and if you do know, don't pick from polluted waters or unnaturally fertilized lawns.