Sat morning, rucking back from downtown Los Altos, we stopped at the DeMartini

Orchard, a farmers-market style grocery store, and came away awed. It boasted a 

few exotic foods, including porcini, morel, and truffles and buffalo milk and

this was the first time we saw fresh fiddleheads in a store, fetching $30/lb.

Just five days ago, I paid four bucks at a nearby Korean store for a 2lb pack

of presoaked fernbrake.

Meanwhile, half a globe away in north-eastern China near the Russian border,

the spring harvest frenzy for wild greens has just drawn to a close and the

crops, including mainly various fiddleheads, are blanched and often dried, and

bagged or vacuum-sealed for shipping. Some might just have come to the Bay

Area and ended up in my fridge.

Until recently, the greens foraged from the ChangBaiShan(长白山)region have mostly

been exported to two eastern Asian neighbors. According to an 80-year-old lady

from the Wanda Mountains, the Japanese came with demand in the 60s. It was said

that the islanders ate bracken fiddleheads (they called it weicai) regularly in

small portions to fend off industrial pollution and radiation. They first bought

the greens fresh and later taught the gatherers how to process them for longer

shelf life. In the days of planned economy, it was an important source of income 

for the locals and nearly every family picked. Known as gosari on the Korean

peninsula, the fernbrake is an ingredient of the bibimbap and some of their

banchans. The Chinese first did not like the plant's slightly bitter taste and

worked only for the money but domestic demands have since picked up as the trend

of natural foods overtook the globe.

An article in The Atlantic warned, like liqor, bracken fiddleheads could be

carcinogenic if not properly treated or over-consumed. The author might relax to 

enjoy gosari from ethnic food stores, however, if he watched how Asian foragers

first boiled and then soaked the greens in cold water before further processing.

Armed with the background knowledge, I gingerly opened my pack of gosari. The

spears looked recently picked and they sported grayish purple to dark green

colors. The liquid they came in had no smell or taste. I soaked half, cut them

into bite-size pieces, and sauted them in butter. Tender and crunchy, they

reminded me of wilted asparagus. Except for a slight earthiness, they gave

almost no flavor. They didn't even taste bitter.

My experiment was far from over, however, as we finished the dish. Wild greens

are a valuable cultural heritage worth preserving and they will have a place in

my diet.