Fern, Farro & Feta Salad

I like the idea of eating wild foods even when I can only discover them in grocery stores. Yesterday I spied some fiddlehead ostrich ferns, kogomi in Japanese, and bought them to try. Full grown ferns are toxic, so you have to be cautious about your preparation of fiddleheads – boiling for 10 minutes is necessary and you want to make sure that the curled up ferns are nice and tight.
If you can’t find ferns in your market you could substitute asparagus, which is similar in taste but without the earthy overtones.
Fern, Farro & Feta Salad
serves 2 as a main dish or 4 as a side
1/2 cup farro
1 cup fiddlehead ferns
2″ square feta cheese
1/2 onion
1 lemon
1/2 tsp sesame seeds
1/4 tsp sesame oil
olive oil
salt to taste
Boil the farro in water for 20 minutes. Drain and set aside to cool.
Chop the onion into bite-size pieces and prepare to steam them over the fern water. I use a metal strainer that sits nicely over my small saucepan.
Clean the ferns by scraping off any loose brown bits and cutting the stems close to the curls. Wash and rinse well. Drop into a pan of boiling water and cook for ten minutes. Steam the onions.
Zest the lemon and juice half of it. Combine the lemon zest & juice, sesame oil, sesame seeds. Adjust with salt and olive oil as desired.
Combine the farro, ferns, onion in a bowl. Crumble in the feta and drizzle the dressing over everything, giving it a good stir. Serve at room temperature.