Saturday, May 28, 2011

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.

Monday, May 9, 2011

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.