fiddlehead ferns

This post is submitted to Fight Back Fridays and the No GMO Food Challenge Blog Carnival.  Eating wild foods takes me out of the industrial food system, and I won’t be eating any GMO foods.  I like that!

Eating fresh sustainable produce and grass fed beef feels good.  I’m getting superior nutrition because of the way the food is grown, and I’m supporting farmers who are good stewards to this earth so that nutritious food may grow year after year.  One step further is wild food, so long as it is foraged in areas away from pollution (don’t forage along the roadside – car exhaust) and the food is harvested/hunted in a sustainable manner, so new generations can be gathered year after year.

I recently purchased a bunch of wild foods: morels, fiddlehead ferns, wild arugula, nettles, ramps and dandelions.  A lot of these were new foods to me.

Morels are a kind of wild mushroom.  As I discovered, they have a rich and powerful flavor that reminded me of a perfectly cooked steak.  I’ll be eating morels again for sure.

Fiddlehead ferns are the top portion of a young wild fern.  When they are young and growing, they are curled up and look like the end of a violin.  They taste fresh and green and woodsy.  People describe them as being similar to asparagus.

Wild arugula is just like cultivated arugula – good cooked or raw.  A little spicy and quite good.

Nettles, as I described in a previous post featuring them, are green leafy vegetables with a flavor not unlike spinach or kale or some mixture of green leafy vegetables.  They are a bit prickly, so you need to boil them before eating.

Ramps are a member of the Alliaceae family – the same family that gives us the onions, leeks, garlics and chives.  They grow wild in many places and are so popular in Quebec that there is a limit on how many you can collect, so as to prevent them from being over harvested.  They taste somewhere between a leek and a garlic, and are completely edible.

Dandelion greens can be eaten raw or cooked, but they begin to get bitter as they get older.  Best to eat these young and fresh.

I wasn’t quite sure what to do with all of these, it being my first time cooking many of them.  I decided to saute all but the nettles (nettles weren’t included at all in this dish) and toss them with some pasta and lemon and topped with Parmesan cheese and another drizzle of olive oil.  It was delicious, though I realized at once that I could have easily made the morels and fiddleheads the star of the show.  In fact, I wouldn’t have objected to a plate filled with sauteed morels and little else!  Being my first time cooking most of these, it was a lesson in preparation as well as taste.

If you decide to go for any of these wild foods I’ve mentioned, a few tips:

Morels should be the star of the dish they are included in.  They have such a wonderful flavor – don’t cover it up with too many other ingredients.  Keep your morel dishes simple.  One of my cookbooks suggests cream goes well with morels.  They have a lot of nooks and crannies, so care must be taken when washing them.  They will keep a few days in the fridge, but use them quickly.  Once you taste them, you won’t want to wait.

Fiddleheads can also play a primary role in the dish they are included in, but they will need a little more help from supporting ingredients.  I’m not sure I’d eat a plain plate of sauteed fiddleheads.  Toss them with pasta, other veggies, oils or other fats, etc.  They would probably be good in a soup or in a salad.  For these, I washed them once, then boiled at a good clip for 3 minutes.  After 3 minutes, I shocked them in an ice bath to stop the cooking.  Let them rest in the cold water and let any additional debris sink to the bottom.  Then slowly and without disturbing the water too much, take the fiddleheads out, leaving the debris on the bottom, and give them once more rinse.  At that point, you can saute them, stir fry them, bake them, or do whatever you wish.

Wild arugula can be used just the same way as cultivated arugula.  Use it raw on salads, toss with pasta, bake into a frittata.  I like arugula pesto, which I recently made and served over some steamed potatoes.

Nettles must be boiled before eating.  Once boiled, include them in a soup, or make my gratin recipe.  They can be dried and used in tea.  Most things you do with green leafy vegetables (kale, chard), you can probably do with nettles.

Ramps can be used anywhere you would use a leek, garlic or green onion in a one to one substitution.  Substituting for garlics will give you just a little bit extra leeky flavor, while when you are substituting for leeks, be prepared to get a bit of garlic flavored kick.  I put them in my arugula pesto in place of garlic.

Dandelion greens are best young otherwise they can get bitter.  They can be cooked or used in salads.

I definitely did ok in my first experimentation with these wild foods, but next time I’d like to do better.  What are your favorite recipes, preparation methods, and tips?

Tags: Greenmarket, ideas, mushrooms, vegetables