Category

spring

  • Sugar Snap Peas and Asparagus with Hand-Pounded Pesto

    Sugar Snap Peas and Asparagus with Hand-Pounded Pesto

    When you spend twelve years in L.A., it’s easy to forget what real spring feels like. I say “real spring” because the spring that you get in L.A. is ersatz spring… nothing really died in the winter, so nothing really comes back. It never got that cold, it never snowed, you never stepped into an…

  • The Ultimate Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

    The Ultimate Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie

    I’m a terrible dancer, though I enjoy dancing. In college, I was in a production of A Funny Thing Happened to the Way to the Forum (I played Hysterium; such typecasting) and learned the box step. That’s the extent of my dancing prowess. Give me a bouncy Sondheim score and a solid square of dance…

  • Spring Pea Purée with Preserved Lemon

    Spring Pea Purée with Preserved Lemon

    Spring peas require patience. You have to take the time to go to the farmer’s market to find them and then you have to remove them from their pods. If you have a lazy afternoon ahead and you want to sit on your front porch rocking in a chair and chatting with neighbors, by all…

  • Four-Hour Lamb Shoulder with White Beans and Olive Tapenade

    Four-Hour Lamb Shoulder with White Beans and Olive Tapenade

    Hold your ears, short ribs, and hide your eyes pork butt: lamb shoulder is quickly becoming my favorite cut of meat to cook at home. I’ve sung its praises before here on the blog, but lately I’ve been on a real lamb shoulder kick. I made April Bloomfield’s version for a crowd recently and they…

  • The Raw Rhubarb Daiquiri

    The Raw Rhubarb Daiquiri

    You can taste great food in your head long after you first experience it. That’s the case for me and the rhubarb cocktail I drank at Franny’s in 2009. Most rhubarb drinks have a cooked quality to them; the rhubarb is generally poached in a sugar syrup. The Franny’s rhubarb drink (which, apparently, is made…

  • Zhenya’s Stinging Nettles

    Zhenya’s Stinging Nettles

    You may recall that a few weeks ago, I befriended Zhenya, The Feral Gardener, while buying a Dr. Brown’s black cherry soda at Katz’s Deli. On May 1st, Zhenya wrote me an e-mail: “I just picked a ton of very young stinging nettles and would be happy to give you at least half a ton….…

  • Purple Peruvian Potato Hash

    Purple Peruvian Potato Hash

    A good argument to be made about the farmer’s market is: if you really believe in it, and go there to support farmers and local, sustainable agriculture, you should patronize it all year, including those rough months of winter. That is a good argument but, unfortunately, a rather impractical one. I mean when it’s bitter…

  • Penne with Ramp Pesto, Asparagus & Peas

    Penne with Ramp Pesto, Asparagus & Peas

    I’ll admit, I get lazy when it comes to eating seasonally. It’s easier to pop into the grocery store across the street, where lemons, onions and garlic look the same the whole year round, than it is to march all the way up to the Union Square Greenmarket on a windy or rainy spring day.…

  • Asparagus & Rhubarb

    Asparagus & Rhubarb

    I used to be very confused about seasonal food. I understood the basic idea–that you should buy food when it’s in season, at its peak–but what I didn’t understand is that because most supermarkets in America stock these “seasonal” foods all-year round (tomatoes and watermelon in winter), the only real way to experience seasonal food…

  • Penne with Broccoli Rabe

    Penne with Broccoli Rabe

    Broccoli rabe is usually the first thing I buy at the farmer’s market when the weather gets warmer. It’s a transitional vegetable: something that bridges us from the dark and murky vegetables of winter to the bright and sprightly vegetables of summer. Raw, it tastes rather fresh and green, but cooked, it takes on all…