Eric went fishing last night and came home with a handful of fiddleheads he picked alongside the Battenkill. And I thought I had missed the boat on this year’s fiddlehead crop.
I realized last night the reason why the water that I used to steam the fiddleheads when I cooked them the other night turned rust: The fiddleheads have a thin husk around them, which is a rusty color. Even though I tried to remove most of these husks from the fiddleheads before I steamed them, I could tell there were pieces of husk within the coiled ferns. The color from these husks must have leached out into the cooking liquid while the baby ferns were steaming.
Sugar on Snow 