hey there on this episode of 100 ways
eat wild I'm hanging out with Chef
Whitaker of Forge and Timber restaurants
uh we're on a spring forging uh
adventure and we're going to show you a
little bit about picking fiddle heads
and cooking them
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up so here we are we found a fery spot
just off the side of the road with lots
of ostrich Fern we're hanging out with
Jeff Whitaker he's going to tell us a
little bit about uh what we're looking
for when we're picking
fiddleheads yeah so we're looking for uh
either lady fern or ostrich Fern I
prefer ostrich Fern because you get a a
better volume of fiddle heads um just
size-wise um I find
that lady friends are a lot of work to
make a meal so um we've got couple of
nice mature ostrich FS here um this one
here if you notice um um they sort of
shoot sort of straight up and then
you'll see at the base of
them let's move
this stuff away you'll see how they come
up and they'll usually have this sort
of black material on them or brown
material if it's dry so um all you're
going to do is pop it off and there you
go and you can see there's probably
another one here too we'll grab it
nice and
young tasty yeah super tasty uh the
thing I will say though is you
know if you try and grab every Fiddle
Head that's popping up through here like
if you take five or six off this plant
this plant's going to die so maximum two
or three fiddle heads per plant and uh
you know preserve your your spot so you
have many years of good Fiddle Head
picking so we've got the mature ostrich
Fern here and the ferns are just a
little bit thicker um you could see the
base of these FS they can be more
resilient to the two three fiddle heads
per per pick
um when a plant grows it's going to have
the same amount of fiber in the stem uh
if it's immature or mature so I prefer
to go to the mature side uh just because
you get more uh volume of vegetable to
fiber so um you get like a nicer nicer
eat on them and uh they're going to be
really sweet and delicious like we we'll
show you later on great so we've got a
mature ostrich Fern here you see how
there's pretty much no fiddle heads left
um they're usually quite thick in the
base um and they fan out as they get
bigger so obviously this isn't the most
ideal uh plant to be looking for fiddle
heads but it's a good way to know um the
difference between this and a sword Fern
which is is toxic so
um yeah you definitely want to get a
book and and research your ferns but um
this is my favorite Fern for FID heads
great so we got a handful of fiddle EDS
here
um all you really want to do to clean
them is just to pull off all that brown
and black stuff that we were talking
about and it's it is a bit of a process
but you know necessary
one and then you get these
beautiful looking fiddle heads and
pretty much anywhere you're going to
find ferns you're going to find a lot of
water nearby so yeah pretty much yeah
beautiful no
shortage okay so we're back at Camp here
and we've just got the um plot fired up
with some boiling water and uh Chef
Whitaker is going to show us what to do
next here with these lovely um little
heads awesome great so uh we just have
some salted uh boiling water here um
we're going to cook these fiddle heads
for pretty close to 5 minutes uh in a
rolling boil
um they say there's a certain level of
toxicity with um fiddleheads so you'll
want to cook them longer than you would
a normal cream vegetable it also takes
away some of the bitterness that would
be associated with them so we'll get
those
in and we'll just just let those go uh
for about 5 minutes and then we'll uh
show you what to do with them
next those are beautiful yeah just
tender they're still green even though
they've cooked for a period of
time okay so these are guys move carb
oil a little bit and then uh Chef
Whitaker's got a plan here there we go
so we just got a medium high heat pan
we're just going to get a little butter
going into
it kind of brown it just a little bit to
get some nutty characteristics in the
butter and then in go
our beautiful fiddle heads we'll slow
the heat down a little bit
you got them really nicely cleaned up a
there that hair left on them yeah so
that that's what we showed you how to
clean all that off so they look nice and
pristine and beautiful like
that beauty now at this point I would
generally add salt but um dlan with eat
wild uh doesn't believe in packing salt
on hunting trips so you got to go light
buddy got go got to
go you had no lemon or olive oil it's
kind of weird he brings the chef Into
the Wild then I brought you half a ton
of butter yeah there we go and I gave
you fiddle heads what else did you ask
me great
so uh as they start to sauté we're going
to introduce a little bit more butter
again and we're going to sort of saw
like sort of make a bit of a
sauce in the absence of salt in the ABS
of salt will gr a little parm in
there beautiful get the saltiness he's
got nice little Paras cider here we'll
just work it work it into a bit of a
sauce on the on the fiddle
heads sort of see how that creamy sauce
develops just from those couple of
ingredients that nice little creamy
sauce is just beautiful on those coming
together nicely
yeah and that'll pretty much be it that
mean I can just reach in here and grab
one of these yeah you can grab one and
that oh my God the parmesan on there
fantastic pretty good y
nice let's heat these up yep nice grab
one
awesome yeah totally good
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