2 tb Vinegar or lemon juice

      6 tb Melted butter or salad oil

    1/2 ts Prepared mustard

    1/2 ts Each paprika and salt

           Freshly ground black pepper
      1 ts Chopped chives or

      1 ts Grated onion

      2    Hard-boiled eggs; chopped

      2 c  Fiddlehead ferns

           -- cooked and chilled
  Combine all ingredients except the last two; mix well.  Arrange
  hard-boiled eggs over top of the chilled, cooked fiddleheads and pour
  vinaigrette sauce over all.
  The author wrote:  "Fiddleheads, the coiled tips of young fern
  fronds, are a springtime delicacy especially prized by New Englanders
  and wild foods enthusiasts.  Their season lasts only two weeks or so
  in May. Three kinds of the curled crosiers are gathered: those of the
  ostrich fern, the cinnamon fern, and the common bracken fern.
  "The fiddlehead is ready to pick when it is pushing up swiftly
  through the ground with its tightly coiled tip, shaped like the head
  of a fiddle. Fiddleheads are picked in the morning when they are
  woodsy-smelling and fresh flavored and snap off crisply into the hand
  of the picker. By afternoon the glowing green-coiled crosiers can
  have outgrown the edible stage, becoming unfurled fern fronds.
  "The cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea) fiddlehead is gathered when
  it is about eight inches tall.  The crosiers and one-half inch to two
  inches of the stem are eaten.  A grayish-yellow woolly covering on
  the stems and tips must be removed (sometimes with difficulty) before
  the fiddleheads are cooked.  They are washed and then rubbed to
  remove the fuzz. Fiddleheads will keep for a couple of days in the
  refrigerator after picking, but wild flavors and freshness are
  transitory. Better to pick fiddleheads in the morning and eat them
  before night - or freeze them."
  "The ostrich fern (Pteris nodulosa)...is the tall, graceful plant that
  grows on stream and river banks where the water comes up in the early
  spring.  So abundant are the ostrich ferns in the lush natural
  ferneries of the Winooski valley near Waterbury, Vermont, that
  quantities of the fiddleheads are harvested, packed in snow, and
  transported to Maine where they are canned for sale in specialty food
  stores.
  "Fresh, crisp fiddleheads are steamed or boiled in salted water for
  20 to 30 minutes, until just tender.  Their flavor hints of asparagus

  and mushrooms combined, and they are delectable served with either of
  these compatibly flavored foods.  But the best dish of plump
  fiddleheads is simmered gently and served hot, enhanced only by the
  simplest adornment of melted butters, served within hours after the
  crosiers are gathered..."
  From _The Wild Flavor_ by Marilyn Kluger.  Los Angeles: Jeremy P.
  Tarcher, Inc., 1984.  Pp. 245-248.  ISBN 0-87477-338-5.  Typed for
  you by Cathy Harned.