Fiddle Heads Attempt #4

I just found this picture on my camera. Geoff and I made this for dinner a couple weeks ago after having gone out for drinks with his sister and brother-in-law. His brother-in-law ordered a pasta with lots of garlic, some tomatoes and oil. It smelled so good, I thought about it for days. It seemed easy enough so we gave it a shot and added a couple of extras.

Ingredients:
Pasta
Shrimp, peeled and de-veined
Fiddle Heads, ends trimmed and washed
Tomatoes (diced, or cherry tomatoes cut in half)
4 cloves garlic, chopped as much as possible
Olive oil
Butter
4 tsp lemon juice

1. Boil fiddle heads for 5 minutes
2. When fiddle heads are done, begin boiling pasta (should take about 10 minutes for the pasta to be ready)
3. While the pasta is cooking, cook shrimp in a little bit of butter, 2 tsp lemon juice and garlic
4. Fry fiddle heads in a little butter and 2 tsp lemon juice
5. Once pasta is done, drain and put back in the pot, add fiddle heads, shrimp diced tomatoes and garlic. Toss with enough oil to just cover the noodles.
   

Fiddle Heads Attempt #3 plus CRASH Potatoes!

I'm not sure what part of this meal was better, the fiddle heads or the potatoes. Probably the potatoes... but then I do love bacon... and fiddle heads.

The potatoes were AWESOME. I've never had potatoes that tasted sooooo good. They were delicious. We first made them for Geoff's sister, Brother-in-law and their sometimes roommate. They were a hit.

This attempt at fiddle heads was our best yet. I think frying them up really made them taste much much better than just putting a sauce on top.

Ingredients for Crash Potatoes
12 or so baby red potatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
Coarse salt and pepper
garlic powder (or whatever spice you want to use)
sour cream for topping (optional)

Ingredients for fiddle heads
Fiddle heads
4 slices thick bacon

Potatoes

1. Boil the potatoes for about 15 minutes until fork tender.
   
2. Preheat oven to 400F.
   
3. Arrange potatoes on a baking sheet and smash them down once or twice so they're broken open and kind of flattened but still in one piece.
   
4. Drizzle the olive oil on top, sprinkle salt, pepper and garlic powder on top. Bake for 20 minutes, serve with sour cream on top.

Fiddle heads

1. Trim the ends and boil for 5 minutes to get the gross brown coating off.
   
2. Meanwhile, fry up the bacon until crispy and set aside onto paper towel to soak up some of the grease.
   
3. Drain about half of the bacon grease from the pan and fry the fiddle heads up in the remaining grease for about 5 minutes.
   
4. Crumble the bacon up with the fiddle heads and serve!

Fiddle Heads Attempt #2

So this is our second attempt at fiddle heads. We had to leave the cottage early one weekend, so my grandpa gave Geoff and I each a delicious tender rib steak to make for our own dinner at home (we actually don't have steak every night even though Geoff would love that)

This time we decided to top our steak with quartered white mushrooms fried in butter and garlic. As for the fiddle heads, Geoff Googled some recipes in an attempt to find something new. He clearly can't read properly because he thought there was a recipe that included wasabi, so we mixed some into soya sauce and poured the mixture over the fiddle heads and rice. While wasabi can be fairly strong, we figured the rice would be able to soak up the excess spice.

Although it was something new, we probably wouldn't make it again. At least not with a juicy steak since the flavours clashed a little much, but it might compliment various types of seafood instead.

Fiddle Heads Attempt #1

This is our first attempt at fiddle heads this spring. They were good, but we've since done WAY better. Everyone probably knows how to grill a steak and how to cook rice already, so we're not going to talk about that here.

Ingredients
1/2 lb Fiddle heads ends trimmed
2 tbsp melted butter
1 tsp jarred garlic (could use fresh garlic but it would give it a much stronger garlic taste)
1 tsp lemon juice

1. Boil fiddle heads for 5 minutes in salted water in order to get rid of the brown coat that grows on the fiddle heads to protect them over the winter (it's this that makes the fiddle heads bitter, so you have to boil them even if you plan on pan frying them as well).
   
2. Mix the butter, garlic and lemon, pour on top. This mixture is really good if you have the rice underneath because it flavours the rice as well.