Fiddlehead ferns gently sauteed with garlic and herbs are tender, flavorful, with just a bit of a crispness left to them. They taste a little like asparagus. Very delicious……and very wild.
And yes, they really are from ferns! They are fern shots from a certain ostrich fern (not all ferns are edible, by the way, so take come classes before you start trying to gather them yourself!). Fiddlehead ferns are only available for a short time, so grab them while you can! Your best bet for finding them is at local farmer markets.
My fiddlehead ferns were bought from my local farmer’s market where a lady coordinates a booth selling products from different professional wild food gatherers. There were many items to choose from, but the fiddlehead ferns were on the top of my list to try. Yum! They were good.
But more than just their culinary value, I feel that wild food is on the opposite spectrum of genetically modified food. Wild food isn’t even cultivated, but simply needs to be gathered (and yes, they are generally very high in nutrients). On the other hand, genetically modified food took not only a lot of cultivation, pesticides and other human intervention, but also required a scientist to create it in the first place. GMO’s are the scientific worlds answer to nature’s natural resources.
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