Lifelong forager shares tips for fiddleheading

With water levels subsiding along river valleys, ostrich ferns have begun poking their little heads out of the fertile ground.

It's fiddlehead season.

Foragers are scouring their traditional caches or venturing into new valleys in search of the spring delicacy one Twitter user astutely described as"vegetarian escargot" for itsmouth-watering flavour and snail-like, leafyspiral.

With only minor flooding this year, there are fewer concerns about contaminants. But any experienced fiddleheader willtell you it's still a good idea to wash fiddleheads thoroughly.

Jamie Simpson has been an avid forager since he was about 10 years old.

"The idea of collecting wild food caught my imagination" said theSaintAndrews native.

Someone had given him a foraging guidebook written for children.

"My mom used to send me out the door with this little book, and I would go out and try to find plants that I could eat."

He's since written his own guidebook called Eating Wild in Eastern Canada: A Guide to Foraging in the Forests, Fields and Shorelines.

Simpson can't remember the first time he picked a fiddlehead it was so long ago but it's an annual tradition for him.

"I just love it," he said.

These days his regular foraging grounds are closer to his new home in Nova Scotia.

In southern New Brunswick, fiddleheads are typically ready around Mother's Day.

The season lasts about two weeks.

Simpson likes the biggest ones.

Somehow they have better flavour, he said.

Foraging them is "pretty straightforward," said Simpson.

"You need to find a river that has a bit of a floodplain next to it. And typically they grow in areas with rich soil. So rich hardwood forests. If you're looking at a bog or a sort of a spruce fir forest, you're probably not going to find them there."

The next key is to make sure you have the right type of fern.

"One of the best ways, of course, is to go out with somebody that knows, that's done it before," he said.

But if that's not an option, he suggests buying some from a local grocery store or market, so you have something to compare them to.

One way to recognize fiddleheads in the forest, said Simpson, is by the structure of the plant bunches. Ostrich fern fronds grow in rings around a central crown.

He typically picks only a couple of fiddleheads from each clump to make sure the plant remains healthy and will continue to be productive next season.

"As long as they're picked responsibly, they'll come back generation after generation in the same area. So, you want to make sure that you leave behind a healthy plant."

The individual fronds also have distinctive characteristics to look for.

"If you find any little bit of fuzz or little hairs," he said, "you know you've got the wrong species of fern."

Another way to identify them is by looking at a cross-section of the stalk. Fiddlehead stalks have a U-shape, like celery, said Simpson. If the stock has a D-shape or is round, he said, it's not an ostrich fern.

If it's the wrong kind, it won't necessarily give you acute food poisoning, said Simpson, but you'll likely get an upset stomach. And some ferns have been associated with cancer risks.

Besides a good washing, Simpson also advises thorough cooking. That will also help avoid tummy aches.

"I just like to boil them up and then and then have them with a bit of butter and sometimes lemon juice and of course a bit of salt."

"It's really important to get just the right amount of cooking, I find. Because if you overcook them, the texture is all wrong. And if you undercook them, that's not really good either. You have to experiment to make them perfect."

He also pickles them.

"Actually, I just finished my last jars of pickled fiddleheads the other day."

Simpson hasn't been able to get out yet this season because of lockdown restrictions in Nova Scotia. He's hopeful they'll be lifted before all the ferns have unfurled.