Local Produce Feature: Fiddleheads!!

Back in March, Michael Pollan came to visit Tufts on his book tour for "Omnivore's Dilemma". I felt pretty lucky to be able to see him speak since:

a) it was free
b) I had given an exam to my Nutrition students a few hours before and since Nutrition students are all food nerds like me, we all agreed instead of continuing with lecturing we would free ourselves up for this special lecture.

This is all a prelude to the fact that I will make an effort this spring/summer to feature things that I bought at the farmer's market or that is locally grown. So here is the first in the series.

I didn't know before I bought these fiddleheads that they are a unique delicacy to New England!! To tell you the truth, the sight of them kind of weirds me out. They look prehistoric and the curled up fronds look like a microbial trap. My google search of "fiddlehead food poisoning" confirms that there have been case reports. Seeing as I already enjoyed my dish several days ago and am typing sans violent GI symptoms, I'm guessing I cooked the heck out of them. At least I was not paralyzed by my public health practitioner side, right?

I've usually only had these with a bit of oil, butter and garlic, but I decided to try them in a stir fry with chicken, red peppers, garlic and black bean sauce. Delicious!

Farmer's Market Finds

Walking around on July 4th in downtown Boston requires some strategic tourist avoidance. The plan has to include getting an early start as people start camping out on the lawn in front of the Hatch Shell to get a good fireworks and Boston Pops viewing spot.

We had plans to do some errands around the Pru, so happened up the farmer's market in Copley Square that is there on Tuesdays and Fridays.

Yummy produce abound! We bought these funky rainbow carrots and some odd coloured beets. I didn't notice the urinary pigmentation this time since they aren't as dark red. Here are the beets, but I won't show you the salad as it was very similar to a salad that I wrote about earlier. I used goat cheese purchased at the farmer's market instead of gorgonzola.




Here are the rainbow carrots.




I made a tasty veggie side using string beans and a citrus marinade (lemon rind, orange rind and juices of both fruits). And served it alongside my beef brisket that I made in my slow cooker.