How To Cook Fiddlehead Ferns

Last night we cooked fiddlehead ferns, which was a new culinary adventure. These crazy-looking vegetables are only available for a few weeks each spring, and I'm glad we got the chance to try them. I was surprised to see that none of my cookbooks had recipes for fiddlehead ferns, nor did epicurious.com, which is one of my go-to resources for recipes. Thank goodness for Google and the wide world of internets. Here's how we ended up cooking our ferns:

First, I trimmed the long ends off of the ferns with a pairing knife and rinsed them in some cold water. Next, I blanched them in a pot of boiling water for approximately two minutes. I scooped them out with a strainer saving the water for some whole wheat pasta.

After straining the fiddlehead ferns we immediately dunked them into a bath of ice water to stop the cooking. Then I drained the ferns and dried them (in my salad spinner, actually). Meanwhile, we put the whole wheat pasta into the boiling water.

Once dry, they were ready to be sautéed. I heated a large skillet and added about 1/4 c. of olive oil to the pan, when the oil got hot I tossed in the fiddlehead ferns. After sautéeing the fiddleheads for a minute or two I added six chopped (not minced) garlic cloves and cooked for a few more minutes.

Then I pushed the ferns to the sides of the pan and toasted a pin of red pepper flakes at the center of the pan (this "hot spot" toasting is a favorite trick of Lidia Bastianich). Then I added the juice of 1/2 a lemon, a healthy dose of freshly ground black pepper and some coarse salt.

Finally, we added the pasta to the pan and drizzled a little extra olive oil over everything and tossed. We topped the pasta with freshly grated Parmesean.