Saturday, May 9, 2009

Fiddle-dee-dum, not dead yet

There are few things I get nervous about in the food world. And, mostly, these things are avoidable deaths: Don’t feed your dog chocolate, don’t eat rhubarb leaves. And cook your fiddleheads thoroughly.

Well, undercooked fiddleheads aren’t fatal, as far as I know. They’ll just make you sick.

But tonight I cooked my first fiddleheads, and I think I’ll live. More than that, they were rather quite good. Tender, and buttery, they’re a lot like mild, just-out-of-the-ground asparagus.

I sprinkled them with mizithra—a salty, Greek sheep’s cheese. It’s dry and crumbly, and it can almost be used as a hefty substitute for salt.

Ah, yes, and a helluva lot of butter.

That’s it.

Fiddleheads with butter and mizithra
½ lb fiddleheads
1/4 cup salted butter
1 or 2 tablespoons crumbled or grated mizithra

Wash and trim the brown ends of the fiddleheads. Bring water to boil in a large saucepan. Boil the fiddleheads for 4-5 minutes. Drain. In a frying pan, melt the butter and add the fiddleheads.

Sautée for an additional 4-5 minutes, or until tender like asparagus. Serve with mizithra.

2 comments:

Annabelle Blais & Pascale Rose Licinio said...

I have tried the carrot recipe, twice.
It's very good but i still have problem to find that perfect "crunchyness".

Fiddlehead is a good idea, I'll try that too, it's been years!

Annabelle

Unknown said...

Add macadamia nuts to the doggie death list - only 6 of them can kill your best friend.