Fiddleheads, Fiddleheads

It's fiddlehead season in southern Ontario (or in the northeast - depending on where you are). I've read that people in California can pay up to $20 a pound for this tasty vegetable! Aren't we lucky to get them for a tenth of that price - if not for free. A friend of ours has them growing wild right on his property, so he gave us two ziploc bags full this past week.

Have you tried fiddleheads? They taste something like asparagus, but are actually the curled up frond heads of the fiddlehead fern plant. They're only available for a couple of weeks in the spring, so you have to be fast!

It's important when preparing fiddleheads to wash and cook them thoroughly. You can get really sick from eating raw or lightly-cooked fiddleheads. We washed ours, then boiled them for 8-10 minutes. After that we sauteed them in garlic, butter, and hot sauce, and ate them with lemon pepper sole (and some berries for colour).

It's been many, many years since I had fiddleheads, and then it was in soup, so I'd forgotten how good they taste.

How do you like to prepare your fiddleheads?