Picking Warabi

[mbarker]

There's a trick to picking warabi. It's easy to learn how to snap them with your fingers -- just grab the stalk and press with your thumb while pulling with your middle finger, and most ot the time they'll snap right off. Then you drop them in your bag or move them to your other hand, and move on.

Oh, what is warabi? Bracken. Ferns, really. But what people pick at this time of year is the shoots, the first stalk with just a curl or light brown blob at the top. Once the leaves start forming, it's too old, and tough. Matter of fact, if you try to snap one of those, you'll find that what was a soft stalk has toughened up and resists snapping. So that's what you're hunting, and there's a trick to it.

The trick is finding them in the first place. Take a gentle hillside, well-covered with last year's ferns, some shrubbery, other odds and ends. Now, in the midst of that, you're looking for these shoots. They don't really stand out at first, but then... they do. And I find that if I move around a bit, let myself relax, glance again -- there's one. And two more beside it. Climb up, snap those off, and look around. There's some more. And more. Check close to the stalks that have already grown leaves. Shift, and look again. Then walk back along the path where you just cleaned up, and... there's another one.

It's a trick of perception, of pattern recognition. That stalk without leaves, that stalk with a blob at the top -- once you start recognizing them, you somehow see right through the old ferns, the shrubbery, and all the rest, and... there's one.

That's the trick. Get it right, and you'll walk back with a bag full of warabi, ready to be cleaned, washed, rinsed again, boiled... and served with soy sauce and mayonnaise, or soy sauce and wasabi. Kind of a soft asparagus?

Fun to pick and good to eat. Give it a try, next time you're in the Japanese country side and someone says they're going to pick warabi.

Comments

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

Makes me want to go out and look for warabi...though I'm think I probably wouldn't find any around here. People laugh about how slow my dog and I take our walk but they don't know we are pausing (I am looking, she is sniffing) to look for the little surprises hidden between the concrete driveways. Sometimes it is a dandelion, sometimes it is a little wren, sometimes it is a quick gecko...but there's always something to remind us that nature still exists. Happy eating.

[origa.livejournal.com]

Very interesting, never heard of it... so, I went searching the info ... This article is warning us, it seems: Bracken has been shown to be carcinogenic in some animals and is thought to be an important cause of the high incidence of stomach cancer in Japan. It is currently under investigation as a possible source of new insecticides. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracken)

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Oh, my goodness. Hum... I don't think I'll tell my wife. I wouldn't have thought we eat enough to cause trouble -- there's only a short season in the spring, and as for most Japanese, who buy it in the stores, it's too expensive for them to eat much. Wow! Thanks...

[dialyn.livejournal.com]

My suggestion would be to do research beyond Wikipedia which is notoriously undependable. They may be right, they may be wrong, but I would never use them as a sole source. I worked for a library and a university and we found more mistakes in Wikipedia than correct information. Good luck.