Remembering Spring pt. 1

The reason there's so much melancholy poetry is that when people are having fun, they don't bother to stop and write about it. Likewise, when food finally began to shoulder up out of winter's grasp in New England, I was too busy finding and cooking it to chronicle it. Which is a shame, because fiddleheads merit discussion. When I was a kid my mom's agrarian spidey-sense would go off at a certain point in the springtime. For the next two weeks we'd collect these nasty-looking baby fern things from the roadside. Childhood revulsion grew into respect and eventually anticipation, and this year I didn't have to buy them from Whole Foods. Fiddlehead season found me back in Maine, and Mom and I put our heads together to track down a local supply. I ended up pulling the car into a gravel swath where a pickup was parked with a cardboard sign: "Fiddleheads 3.00/lb". Two guys, two five-gallon buckets, lots of fiddleheads. Conversation was discouraged, but then they probably noticed my out-of-state plates.

Fiddleheads' character doesn't lend itself to mingling with other flavors, and their limited availability makes me want to enjoy them straight-up while I can. These were lightly sauteed with a bit of garlic and red onion. The idea is to get them just soft enough to eat without reducing them to a spinachy mess. These were fantastic. A little grassy, kind of an asparagus character, and a strong pond flavor that reminds me of watercress. We had plans to freeze them for later in the year, but we went through two pounds in a few days, and that was that.