If you thought that rhubarb season moves fast, fiddlehead season goes by much quicker. The ones at the farmers market were foraged and had a sale window of about 2 weeks. When products like these become available you have to be flexible enough to get them and use them in the best way possible and quickly. Otherwise, as I found out with the rhubarb, the harvest is over and you have to wait another year to try them.
Rhubarb really signals the end of winter and the wonderful transition to much warmer climates for me. I love a good strawberry rhubarb pie with whipped cream. Even the last post's dessert could become one of my new traditions.
Fiddleheads are different, however. They don't yet give me the same seasonal emotional content. I've seen them plenty of times growing up, just never thought to give them a try. They are the fronds of a young fern that are treated as a vegetable. What do they taste like? Imagine asparagus and spinach had an illegitimate love child and you get the picture. Getting to try new things is one of the major perks of doing this project, so I'm eager to jump in.
In this antipasto preparation, Mario has us pickling the fiddleheads for use in a salad with capocollo, a rich cold cut meat, from the Italian capo or head and collo or neck.
Babbo makes their own capocollo, the recipe for which was not included in this cookbook. I'm sure that I could have searched for one online and waited the six months or so for it to fully cure, but I didn't want to wait that long. The fiddleheads are ready now. Maybe I'll try to cure some capocollo some day. For now, I just wanted to try this dish.
Here were the fiddleheads that I found:
Nice huh? I start by pickling the fiddleheads. In a non-reactive sauce pan I boil white wine vinegar, water, sea salt, peppercorns, garlic, fennel seeds, and sugar. I pour this mixture over the fiddleheads and let them cool to room temperature.
At the same market, I found the dandelion greens for this recipe and I combined them with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper.
The capocollo was fairly easy to find so long as you have a good deli locally to rely on.
This very simple salad is ready to plate. The thin capocollo slices get arranged around the plate. The greens get placed in the center along with a few of the pickles.
It was good. Not the best thing ever. But good.
It's a simple plate, but pickling is a great technique to learn even for the home cook. Pickling adds a much needed acid element to a rich fatty dish, which is why you'll see it popping up in many restaurant menus lately. It's also a great way to preserve food. Don't want to use fiddleheads? Try this recipe with cucumbers fresh from the garden.
Speaking of garden, I built a raised bed for my vegetables. Everything is planted, including the cardoons that I hope sprout well because I need them badly. Next year I plan on expanding and building more beds, but what I have will work for now.
I have a good plan for the next few posts, one of which I didn't think that I would be able to make because of how hard the main ingredient is to find. But I'll wash the baby bottles, rock my newborn to sleep, and head back into the kitchen to keep the momentum going. Until next time...
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