What the $%^ are fiddleheads?

You see them in the grocery store (heck, you may see them on your morning jog) a few weeks in spring.  Strange, curled green things, almost catepillar like, sitting in a big pile in the produce section.  Then they vanish, not to be seen again until the following year.  What are they?

Fiddlehead ferns are simply ferns that have not unrolled into their full ferny glory.  There are a handful of species that are edible (most common: Bracken, although Ostrich are more widely available in my neck of the New England Woods), and have been part of few major culinary traditions (Native American, then hence later on New England's, and Asian).  They pop up and quickly over a few weeks turn into the less edible ferns you see during your nature hike.  They are not farmed, but foraged.  Yes, even the ones you find at Whole Foods.

This leads to a particular quandry.  Although growing up on the forest floor near a burbling brook might sound idylic (Figure 1.aa), what it actually makes these is an amusement park for microbes, which  in turn will use your GI tract as a roller-coaster ride.  Fiddleheads should be washed and cooked thoroughly by all but the bravest of gastronomes.  The University of Maine suggests boiling for 10 minutes or steaming for 20, which might be a little much for those of us who want to taste some of the more delicate flavors of these little guys, but not a bad idea if you're foraging them on your own.  Today's foraging spot was yesterday's deer bathroom.

(Figure 1.aa:  The original Avatar.  The whole place was crawling with Giardia.)

So what do we actually do with fiddleheads in the kitchen once we've Bear Grylls'd them out of the woods (or Trader Joe's), other then boil the fun out of them?  They have a spinach-y flavor, and a nice crunch, so I treat them like I do the myriad of greens I get in my CSA box:  Sautee.

Sauteed Fiddlehead Ferns

• One pound of fiddlehead ferns, generously rinsed.  This is not a recipe to try if your town is on a water ban.  Hose those ameoba down the drain!
• About a tablespoon of unsalted butter
• A big splash of white wine.  I used a reisling to balance out the other flavors in the dish.
• Salt.  When I made this recipe, I decided to uber-Spring it up with some weird coarse-salt-and-dried-flowers mixture made by these people.  The attending from the last post brought over the other day in exchange for the notary services of my girlfriend.  Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

Melt the butter in a large sautee pan over medium-high heat.  When it's smoky-hot and almost turning brown, toss in the fiddleheads and let them cook until they're smoky hot and almost turning brown (about 10-15 minutes).  See that light brown patina on the bottom of the pan?  That's pure carmelized flavor, and you're going to harness it with a technique called deglazing.  Right before you think your ferns are ready, throw that splash of wine into the pan and aggressively scrape at that brown stuff with a WOODEN SPOON ONLY.  Do not scrape with a metal spoon, unless you like shrapnel.  Rubber spatulas are not stiff enough to stand up to the task.  Only a wooden spoon will do.  Toss the fiddleheads around in the pan a bit to coat them in your brand-new pan-sauce.  Season with whatever messed up salt you have knocking around in your pantry and serve (Figure 1.ab).

(Figure 1.ab - Fiddleheads make for a great dinner on the balcony.)

Now get off you're computer and go find these things!  You probably only have another week or so before they're gone.

When Attendings Come for Dinner

I usually leave making the sweet stuff to my girlfriend over at MyFrostingAffair.  Due to a recent complex chain of events (Figure 85.a), however, the attending I'm on service with this month ended up moving to an apartment down the hall.  Of course, I invited her and her wife over for dinner.  I was given an epic list of Cannot's:  Ovolacto-vegetarians, but one doesn't like the taste of eggs (although as an ingredient, they're okay) and the other is pregnant, which nixed a whole litany of foods.  I ended up making a warm lentil salad and hand cut saffron papardelle (post coming soon) with oyster mushrooms, portabellos and asparagus.  In a fit of Top Chef-esque culinary frenzy I decided that in the 1.5 hours I had left myself to cook everything, I would make a dessert.

Figure 85.a - A visual analog to how I ended up having my attending/neighbor over for dinner. (http://oi53.tinypic.com/)

I make a great, very rich, girlfriend-impressing, chocolate mousse.  It's old school, with the only ingredients being good chocolate and eggs (making it lactose free):

Old-School Chocolate Mousse [note: tastes better out of the two]
(recipe adapted from GQ, of all places)

• 8 oz. high quality dark chocolate, somewhere between 55-75% works best.
• 6 eggs.  Since these are kinda-sorta-raw, use the highest quality, freshest local organic eggs you can find (to minimize the risk of food-bourne illness).
• A pinch of kosher salt.

Start melting the chocolate in a double boiler.  Avoid getting any water what-so-ever into the chocolate, at all costs.  This will ruin it.  Completely.  While it's melting, seperate the egg whites from the yolks.  Whip the whites and the salt into stiff peaks with a hand mixer.  Once all the chocolate is melted, take a couple of spoonfuls of the chocolate and mix it into the yolk, then take the mixture and fold it back into the melted chocolate.  This little extra step is called "tempering" and it will prevent you from having chocolate scrambled eggs for dessert.  Fold the chocolate & yolks into the fluffy whites.  Spoon into bowls (or ramekins, if you have them) and chill for a few hours or overnight to let them set.  Serve with homemade whipped cream and a sprinkle of salt on top.

The eggs in this recipe aren't technically 100% all the way cooked, so it was back to the drawing board for a killer dessert to impress my attending/neighbor.  When my mom was diagnosed with Crohn's disease about 10 or 15 years ago, I had made her a dairy-free mousse, the recipe for which I had found in some PETA propaganda I received as part of a project for a highschool class called Problems in American Democracy.  Yes, I know.  I was taking a course called Problems in American Democracy in highschool.  No, I did not wear a pocket protector, or tape in the middle of my glasses.  I lost the recipe a long time ago, but it was easy enough to remember.

New-School Vegan Chocolate Mousse [the technically easier of the two: no tempering]

• 8 oz. high quality dark chocolate, 55-75% cocao
• One package of silken tofu
• (optional) 2 tbsp confectioner's sugar
• (optional) 1 1/2 tbsp garam masala, or to taste.

Melt the chocolate as directed above, again being extrordinarily careful not to get any water into the chocolate from the double boiler.  In the meantime, blend the tofu into a smooth consistency.  I found an immersion blender works really well, and gets a ton of air bubbles into the mousse (this makes it a little more comparable to the old-school version).  If you're sweeting it with sugar, or elevating it with garam masala like I did, now is the time:  Blend them into the tofu before mixing in the chocolate.  When the chocolate is fully melted, mix it into the tofu.  Pour into serving dishes and refrigerate.  Serve with homemade whipcream to undo the vegan-ness, with a sprinkle of coarse salt on top.

There you go.  Two great, straightforward recipes that will make you look like a kitchen champion.  Make one, make the other, make both and have a taste test!  My attending/neighbor loved the dinner, and I'm actually pretty excited to hang out again soon.... but maybe MyFrostingAffair and I will go to their house next time.

Tony's Food 101: Dressing It Up

I've always been envious of homemade salad dressing. There. I said it (as nerdy as it sounds). It's that mine never came out right. No matter how much I shook or whisked, my vinagrettes were just sub-par. They never quite emulsified, or they seperated within nano-seconds. Then, I got this email. How did I not think of this myself? My immersion blender is one of my most beloved kitchen gadgets. I use it to make hummus, smoothies, and of course, pureed vegetable soups. The uses of this item are seemingly limitless. A couple of saftey tips, though:

1) Never lift the immersion blender out of the bowl while the blades are still spinning. Your whole kitchen will be covered in puree.
2) Never put your fingers anywhere near the blades while the device is plugged into the wall. You never think you'll push the button that starts the blades whirling, but you might end up like a dermatologist friend of mine. She was less-than-impressed at the job the emergency medicine resident did on her multiple finger lacerations.

Now that the necessary safety warnings are over with, let's get cooking.

Figure 3.14p - Old School versus New Wave.

Cranberry-Walnut Salad Dressing

(Sorry this is a bit late. This recipe would be better in the late fall or early winter when we tend to have left over cranberry sauce sitting around our fridges, after holiday meals. I actually started this post back in January but totally forgot about it until recently. I'll make up for it with a bonus recipe at the end.)

• 
  
  1/4 cup apple cider vinegar


• 
  
  1/4 cup olive oil and 1/4 cup vegetable oil (or any variation of either of these two oils alone, or a mixture of both. I like the half-and-half ratio.)


• 
  
  A generous handful of toasted walnuts. If you have raw walnuts, crush them into little pieces with your hands or a mallet or something. Put them onto a dry pan without any oil, and toast over medium heat until they're golden and they smell amazing.


• 
  
  2-3 heaping tablespoons of cranberry sauce, preferably a chunky, whole-cranberry type.
  A dash of heavy cream or half-and-half, or a heaping tablespoon of mayonaisse.


• 
  
  (optional) A dash of orange bitters.

Combine all of the above ingredients in a tall container. I like re-used 32 oz yogurt containers for all of my immersion blending needs. Blend until smooth, and store in the container you made it in. I served it over a crunchy salad of sliced red cabbage, fennel and crisp romaine lettuce (see figure 3.14i)

Figure 3.14i - The finished product.

Bonus Recipe: Aoili

This is a more recent creation. My girlfriend doesn't like artichokes. I absolutely love them. I've made them a couple of times, both steamed and stuffed/baked (like my mom makes them) and they were never a go. That is until I made a creamy, garlicky aoili, and told her to dip the artichoke leaves before she ate them. She finished off half the artichoke herself. The second one I made, she told me I had better give her half of the heart, or I would be in trouble. This serves to show you the magic some egg yolk, oil, lemon and garlic can work.

• One high quality egg yolk, the fresher the better. Save the white for an omlette or something.


• One medium or large clove of garlic, roughly chopped. Other, more traditional (read: whisk) recipes will tell you to grind it into a paste with some salt, but with this method, your immersion blenders' whirling blades of doom will do the work.


• Juice from 1/2 of a lemon. You can include a pinch of the zest if you'd like.


• A pinch of salt.


• 1/2 cup of good olive oil.

Combine the first 4 ingredients in a tall container. Get your immersion blenders' blades a-whirlin'. Keep it going, and slowly drizzle the oil into a spot where it's going to hit the blades, while keeping the whole thing relatively submersed in the mixture. This can be a bit tricky. Keep blending until all the oil is incorporated. This method basically takes all the skill out of making an aoili: It will keep for about a week without seperating. At all. The garlic flavor will intensify the longer you keep it in the fridge.

It's good to be back, folks.