Carl Segee is a self-sufficient foodie. The 40-something Medway resident raises his own free-range chickens—both for meat and for eggs, the flavor of which his wife, Diana, claims is far superior to the supermarket variety. His summer garden supplies enough vegetables for colorful feasts well into the long, dreary Maine winter. And he cooks. He slaves over intricate sauces that take days to properly prepare. He makes his own flavored cooking oil—garlic is always a tasty favorite. And, each spring, after the snow is gone and just before the blackflies really arrive, he and Diana pick fiddleheads. Lots of fiddleheads.
“Last year I think we put up 40 quart bags full,” Segee says, thinking back to his spring freezer-restocking forays. “For us, that’s a pretty average year.”
To the uninitiated, 40 quarts sounds like an outrageous amount of frozen greens—the equivalent of a home aquarium stuffed with curled fern fronds. But for those who love wild greens (and you know who you are), or for people hoping to partake in a culinary trend that’s currently overtaking New York City’s well-known Tavern on the Green, the still-curled shoots of the ostrich fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris) are a delicacy worth harvesting in large amounts, for eating now and saving to eat later. For the rest of us, the traditional northern New England food is worth gathering and eating, at least once—if not for the slightly asparagus-like flavor, then at least for the experience. After all, there may be nothing more satisfying than food you found, picked, and prepared yourself. The trick is knowing where to look—and what to look for.
Part of the game
As with the strawberries and blueberries that will arrive later in the year, freshpicked fiddleheads are readily available from roadside vendors, at farmers markets around the state, and even at some supermarkets, often for only a dollar or two a quart. Why so cheap? Probably because they’re so abundant. Any slightly open place saturated by spring freshets—especially along previously ice-scoured shorelines—is likely to sprout fiddleheads. In Maine, that means they can be almost everywhere—though only for a limited time: The ferns unfurl in a few short weeks, so pickers need to act fast.
“On my way home from work, I can stop along the Piscataquis
River, walk down to some flats, and pick there,” says Segee, who
has been picking fiddlehead greens for more than 35 years.
“That’s easy picking. Or I can go down to the stream that runs
near my house. Or take a canoe out to some islands up the river.”
But, Segee says, even if the conditions are right, not every place
has fiddleheads—and some places that once had them now
don’t. So the only way to know for sure if you’re going to find
some is to get out there and search for them.
“If you get three or four days in a row where it’s been sunny and
warm in the afternoons, it’s time to go for a look,” Segee says.
“When they start coming, you can actually feel them underfoot.”
“They’re like little knobs under your feet,” Diana adds. “And if
you come back the next day, they’ll be up, maybe just a few inches
high. And that’s when they taste the best.”
In fact, that might also be when ostrich fern fiddleheads are easiest to identify—an important aspect of
picking, since there are other fiddlehead ferns that you simply don’t want to ingest. When these unique (and safe-to-eat) greens first emerge from the ground, they’re covered in a papery brown sheath that later peels away. But remnants of the covering remain in the still-curled fiddlehead—they need to be cleaned prior to cooking—and those specks, combined with the deep Ushaped trough of the stalk, can be a boon to first-time pickers. Or, you can do what Carl and Diana Segee recommend, and go with someone who has picked fiddleheads before.
“Once you know what they look like, you’ll forever know what they look like,” says Diana. “Once you establish what you’re picking, you can go wherever you want. It’s very obvious.”
Simple pleasures
Fiddleheading is anything but gear intensive. All you need is a container for the greens, which are crisp enough that you can snap the stalks by hand. And picking isn’t time-consuming: Find a patch of fiddleheads,
and in 30 minutes you can easily have enough to go with a meal. What really matters is the prep work: thoroughly cleaning the fiddleheads to rid them of dirt, grit, and those pesky papery specks— and then deciding how to cook them.
“After we brush off the paper, we always soak them overnight,” Carl explains. “We’ll put them in a big bowl and sprinkle them with salt, then fill the bowl with water and put a heavy plate on the fiddleheads to
push them down into it.”
For the Segees, after that cleaning, anything goes. Sometimes the fiddleheads go from the soak to a frying pan for a quick sauté (with some garlic, of course). Sometimes the greens become part of a salad. And sometimes they’re simply eaten raw (a practice not recommended by the Centers for Disease Control; see “Cook ‘em up,” page 37), with a special Parmesan dip and a glass of Chablis.
“Oh, it’s fabulous!” exclaims Diana, whose first fiddleheading trip was years ago, along the Saint John River. By far, though, her most memorable trip was along the East Branch of the Penobscot River. “Once we were paddling down this small stream off the river here, and not far ahead of us an eagle was swooping down to the water and back up again. He was beautiful, big and gorgeous, and he wasn’t paying any attention to us at all.”
And that’s the one thing about fiddleheads that won’t be served at Tavern on the Green. The true flavor of fiddleheads belongs solely to those lucky few who go out and pick their own.
“It’s not just about the fiddleheads,” Diana states. “You go out there and it’s the first real bit of spring and there are animals around and you know you’re going to come back with something to eat. It’s really amazing.”
