Foraging

Out of the Winter and Into the Weeds - New York Times:

By KIM SEVERSON

I WAS living in Alaska the first time I stumbled upon a patch of fiddlehead ferns. Still bleary from eight months of snow and frozen mud, the promise of something wild and green had me in a frenzy.

I took out a pocketknife and began slicing off their tightly furled little heads. I filled my cap, then used my T-shirt as a pouch to hold more, ignoring how much of my arctic white belly showed.

Cleaning them required an immense amount of fiddling around, which should explain the name but does not (the tight heads resemble the scroll at the end of a violin). River sand lodges in the curled leaves, but the main culprit is a brown papery covering.

Recipes suggest gently rubbing the fiddleheads between clean kitchen towels coupled with several baths in cool water. After a half-hour of doing that, I realized it would have been easier to put on a blindfold and pick the brown skin off hazelnuts with tweezers.

When I'd gotten the fiddleheads as clean as I could, I sautéed them in butter and olive oil. I served my friends. They politely picked at their plates, but left most of the bitter little greens untouched. So did I.

Since then, I have danced with the wild foraged foods of early spring, always excited by the possibility and always disappointed with the reality. Ramps and fiddleheads are like promising dates that end up making your ex look terrific.

It's not that I don't love spring foods or foraging. I've spent quite a few days hunting morels. Sautéeing a few of them with fresh fava beans, brightened with a little Meyer lemon, is a much gentler way to welcome spring than wrangling the bitter, tough greens off the forest floor.

Of course, plenty of cooks disagree. In the Northeast, chefs just can't resist putting wild spring plants on the menu, along with their piscine cousin, the shad, a mushy fish so unpleasant to eat that Peter Hoffman at Savoy had to mask it with bacon on his $55 shad tasting menu earlier this month.

Cooks are just as crazy for the bitter fiddlehead of the Ostrich fern, a plant that has its own Centers for Disease Control warning against undercooking. They also love stinging nettles; recipes for these greens begin with instructions to wear gloves or to use kitchen tongs and end with boiling them into a soggy mass.

The appeal is understandable, especially in urban New York kitchens. After months of root vegetables and enough braised meat to choke an ox, cooks are desperate for something — anything — pulled from the earth or out of cold, early-spring water.

David Pasternack, the chef at Esca in Manhattan, recently placed a small pickled fiddlehead fern on top of a piece of raw kingfish as part of his crudo trio.

"It's that unique grassy earthy flavor you really haven't seen since November," he said. "You get so tired of winter that when the guy calls you, you jump for joy. You don't even ask how much the stuff is."

Dan Barber, chef and an owner of the Blue Hill restaurants, had his first taste of this year's ramps a couple of weeks ago.

"It was so excellent," he said. "It's just one of those things that is so insanely seasonal and local and you can't control."

Last spring he pulled ramps from a patch outside the kitchen door at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in Pocantico Hills, N.Y., sautéed them, and sent waiters parading through the dining room with platters full of them. This year he is not so lucky. It appears that the farm's pigs got to them first.

At the New York City Greenmarkets, farmers like Rick Bishop sell ramps and other foods foraged in early spring as a way to bring in some money until the growing season begins in earnest. This year seven sellers are bringing ramps, said Gabrielle Langholtz, publicity manager for the Greenmarket.

Foragers will also sell fiddleheads, a little wild asparagus, cress, dandelion greens, nettles and lamb's-quarters; most of these, I'd like to point out, are classified as weeds by the National Gardening Association. All of this madness is short-lived. Wild spring greens will disappear in two or three weeks.

Their appeal, Ms. Langholtz believes, is a turbocharged version of what drives people to the Greenmarkets in the first place: a desire for local food and a yearning to know more about where food comes from.

"It's taking the relationship with the farmer to another level," she said. "People just want that connection to the land, to the wild."

Even chefs who like wild food admit that it takes some work to make weeds taste good. "I like fiddlehead ferns, but I do think they are time-consuming," said Anne Quatrano, the chef and owner of a little Atlanta restaurant empire that includes Bacchanalia and Floataway Café. "I wouldn't say that everybody really loves them."

Ramps require some work, too. She tames them with a quick pickling, then slips them into dishes such as risotto seasoned with tasso.

Like Ms. Quatrano, Melissa Perello, chef at the Fifth Floor in San Francisco, uses technique and strong flavors to counter the bitterness of wild spring foods. This time of year her menu includes a salad of morels and fiddlehead, relying on vinegar and pungent aged cheese for counterbalance.

"Other spring foods can be more domestic-tasting," she said. "I'd rather cook with something that's not ordinary."

For Lynn Forman, who for 30 years has owned Rhinebeck Health Foods, the appeal is more about the woods than the plate.

"It's just a love of spring and love of the fresh new stuff that's coming out," she said. Ramps are particularly good moneymakers; she will sell them for as much as $20 a pound.

Ms. Forman wasn't surprised by my anti-ramps crusade, and conceded that they might not be the most delicious way to celebrate spring.

"It's kind of like cilantro," she said. "People just love it or hate it."

About 40 urban chefs and ramp enthusiasts love them so much that this year they made their way to the Spence Farm in Fairbury, Ill., about 100 miles south of Chicago, for a ramp dig. On May 8 the ramps will be included in a four-course, $125 dinner at Timo Restaurant in Chicago.

Ramps are the biggest single source of income for the farm. Four weeks of digging up 3,700 pounds brought in $29,600 this year.

"People have a fascination with something that's hard to come by and hasn't been produced in an industrial, factory system," said Terra Brockman, founder of the Land Connection, which works to save farmland and to train organic farmers. Her group organized the ramp dig and subsequent fund-raising dinner.

Concerned with my attitude in an earlier conversation, Ms. Brockman sent a follow-up e-mail message to explain why chefs are compelled to spend the day digging for food with so little culinary payoff.

"They plunge their spades into the earth and release the mixed aromas of rich earth and pungent ramps," she wrote. "They lug the boxes out of the woods, and then painstakingly wash the mud off each ramp. Through this experience, they emerge with a completely different, and deeper, understanding of the ramp and, by extension, other ingredients."

I contemplated this. Maybe I just wasn't getting it. So I decided to seek out someone who could really talk some sense into me.

I called Bonnie Farner, 59, who runs a tiny company called Wild Pantry in Coker Creek, Tenn.

A woman of the forest, Ms. Farner is very particular about whom she allows to buy her ramps. She has a strict code of honor when she harvests, making sure to leave enough so the plants can come back.

She started our conversation by offering a recipe that involves dipping dandelion blooms in pancake batter and frying them until they are golden.

From a desk in Midtown Manhattan, I went on at length about my theory of the tyranny of wild spring foods, about the herd mentality that leads chefs to put them on menus when they shouldn't, and about the high price people pay for dirty, stinky roots.

I could almost hear her shake her head over the phone.

"Well," she said, finally. "What we do here is, we don't complain about the weeds. We eat them."

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Recipe: Fiddlehead Fern and Morel Salad

Adapted from Melissa Perello
Time: 20 minutes

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
8 ounces morels, halved lengthwise and rinsed
8 ounces fiddlehead ferns, trimmed (see note)
2 tablespoons walnut oil, more for drizzling
2 tablespoons walnut vinegar (preferably Vilux), or Banyuls, Champagne vinegar or other good white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon premium quality aged balsamic vinegar, more for drizzling
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Winchester aged Gouda, or aged Parmesan, pecorino or other dry, sharp cheese.

1. Melt butter in a medium skillet over low heat and add mushrooms. Sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

2. Fill a pot with lightly salted water and bring to a boil. Set aside a bowl of ice water. Add ferns to boiling water and simmer for 1 minute. Drain and immediately transfer to ice water to chill. Drain again.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine mushrooms, ferns, oil, 2 tablespoons walnut vinegar and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar. Toss well, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Arrange equal portions of salad in center of six plates. Drizzle a little oil and balsamic vinegar in a circle around each salad, and shave a few slices of cheese on top. Serve immediately.

Yield: 6 servings.

Note: Fiddlehead ferns are sold at some Greenmarkets and can be ordered from Earthy Delights in DeWitt, Mich.: (800) 367-4709 or www.earthy.com.

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Recipe: Ramps and Potato Soup

Adapted from Melissa Perello
Time: 20 minutes

1 tablespoon unsalted butter
8 ounces morels, halved lengthwise and rinsed
8 ounces fiddlehead ferns, trimmed (see note)
2 tablespoons walnut oil, more for drizzling
2 tablespoons walnut vinegar (preferably Vilux), or Banyuls, Champagne vinegar or other good white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon premium quality aged balsamic vinegar, more for drizzling
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Winchester aged Gouda, or aged Parmesan, pecorino or other dry, sharp cheese.

1. Melt butter in a medium skillet over low heat and add mushrooms. Sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat and allow to cool.

2. Fill a pot with lightly salted water and bring to a boil. Set aside a bowl of ice water. Add ferns to boiling water and simmer for 1 minute. Drain and immediately transfer to ice water to chill. Drain again.

3. In a medium mixing bowl, combine mushrooms, ferns, oil, 2 tablespoons walnut vinegar and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar. Toss well, and season to taste with salt and pepper.

4. Arrange equal portions of salad in center of six plates. Drizzle a little oil and balsamic vinegar in a circle around each salad, and shave a few slices of cheese on top. Serve immediately.

Yield: 6 servings.

Note: Fiddlehead ferns are sold at some Greenmarkets and can be ordered from Earthy Delights in DeWitt, Mich.: (800) 367-4709 or www.earthy.com.