Hot Fiddlehead Salad

Since ferns are one of our ubiquitous wild foods that have at last reached big-city grocers, it is now worth discovering how to prepare them. Fiddleheads or fiddlenecks refer to young fern fronds, still curled in the fetal position, cut from any number of edible ferns, such as the ostrich, cinnamon, hay-scented, or evergreen. The Samish liked to roast the stems and rhizomes of pasture brake fern or western bracken, after which they would pound them into flour to make ash-baked bread. If the