my flickr feed is looking greener and greener every day – it really does feel like the colours of food change with the seasons.

so these things called fiddleheads really are intriguing. supposedly in season for a few weeks in may, the shop (literally, not ‘impact story’-wise) under my house has had a little hand written sign in the window since i got here ‘WE HAVE FIDDLEHEADS’. after patrick cooked me some on the weekend i decided to try to play with them myself and bought a few handfuls of them ($6.49 a pound – which seems expensive for stuff around here).

fiddlehead and mushroom ragu on polenta with green salad.

put a small pot of water on to boil. (these damn electric stoves means that takes aaaages)

chop a large french shallot and a couple of cloves of garlic and saute in olive oil till soft. add two big chopped field mushrooms and a tablespoon of butter, saute till soft again.

trim the end of each fiddlehead and rinse well under running water. put in the boiling water for about 5 minutes, until tender-ish. drain and add to the mushrooms, and cook through for a while. it’s all relative, hey?

then i sprinkled about a tablespoon of flour over the mix, stirred it through and started to slowly add soy milk to make a white sauce of it. brown sauce really. it got to a good consistency and i left it to wait while i fried the polenta (which came out of a tube pre-made! crazy) in a bit of olive oil.

the polenta circles are served here with the fiddleheads and mushroom ragu on one side and a green salad with olives on the other. symmetry of greenery.