SPRING PANZANELLA

Yup, still behind. Considering we’re a week past the Fourth of July, I guess I should finish posting last season’s recipes…or at least the ones with “spring” right there in the title. That means breaking my cardinal rule of not posting two Smitten Kitchen recipes in a row and making it obvious that I’m only a few steps away from being a blatant SK fan blog. (I can’t help it! Her recipes are just so good!) This is one I’ve been eyeing on and off for several years, especially since winter panzanella became one of my favorite salads. The white beans in this one always gave me pause—whole, cold beans are still not my favorite, and I knew A would be even less thrilled when confronted with them. But my desire to eat all the spring things, along with the constant need for more main-dish salads in my life, won out.

I made a few adjustments, most notably adding chopped hard-boiled eggs, which I thought might fit in well with the spring theme while also ensuring a fully satisfying, protein-packed one-bowl meal. After we ate, A proclaimed that the egg was an integral part of his enjoyment of the salad, mitigating the presence of the dreaded beans, so a point for me, I guess. I also threw in some green beans because my asparagus bundle looked a bit on the skimpy side (and also because…spring). Finally, after reading many complaints in the comments about the original recipe’s slightly odd leek-cooking method (which involves boiling them whole and then trying to slice them while slimy-soft into chunks that looked off-puttingly large to me), I decided to try slicing them before cooking, which worked just fine. The layers do separate a bit, but the smaller pieces integrated better into the salad—another plus, since A isn’t a huge fan of leeks to begin with. It still feels a bit strange to boil leeks, and I was tempted to roast or sauté them, as some commenters mentioned doing, but I think the simmer does give them a nice, juicy tenderness that’s needed in this salad. (I cut back on the quantity slightly, though, in favor of more green beans.)

The result was an excellent salad, delicate yet flavorful, durable, portable, and pretty. Although I’ll admit the real star of the show might be the incredible garlicky-cheesy croutons.

Croutons:
¼ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
6 cups day-old baguette or other bread, cubed
6 tablespoons finely grated Parmesan, plus more for garnish
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Vinaigrette:
Half a red onion, finely diced
2 to 2½ tablespoons champagne or white wine vinegar
Juice of half a lemon
¼ cup olive oil
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
Salad:
2-4 large leeks
2 teaspoons salt
1 pound asparagus (I used about ¾ pound asparagus and ½ pound green beans, which was delicious)
1 15-ounce can white beans, rinsed and drained, or 1½ cups cooked white beans
2-4 hard-boiled eggs, chopped (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. For the croutons, mix the bread cubes with the garlic, olive oil, Parmesan, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Toss to coat well. Transfer bread to a baking sheet and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake, stirring once or twice, until the croutons are crisp and lightly colored on the outside, about 10 to 15 minutes. Set aside and let cool.
3. For the dressing, mix the red onion with the vinegar and lemon juice in a small bowl and set aside for a few minutes before whisking in the olive oil, Dijon, and salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.
4. Bring a few inches of salted water to a boil in a large pot. Break off and discard tough ends of asparagus, then cut the spears into 1-inch segments. Add to the boiling water and cook until crisp-tender, about 3 to 5 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to transfer it to a bowl of ice water, then drain and pat it dry.
5. Cut off and discard dark green tops and root ends of leeks. Halve each leek lengthwise and rinse well under cold running water to wash away sand. Slice leeks into ½-inch-thick pieces and add to the boiling water in the pot. Simmer, uncovered, until tender, 5 to 10 minutes. Drain, transfer to a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking, drain again, and then pat dry with a towel.
6. Place asparagus, leeks, white beans, and eggs (if using) in a large bowl and mix in the cooled Parmesan croutons. (If you’re not planning on eating all the salad right away, only put croutons into the servings you plan to eat; store remaining salad and croutons separately.) Pour vinaigrette over and toss well. Season with salt and pepper.

Serves: 4 as a main dish, 6 as a side
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Good; store salad and croutons separately until about 15 minutes before you want to eat them.

SHAVED ASPARAGUS PIZZA

I’ll admit that sometimes I have a kneejerk reaction of avoiding things that are trendy, even when those things are right up my alley. Case in point: shaved asparagus pizza, which seemed to me like something that’s popular mainly because it’s so Pinterest*-ready pretty with its tangle of green, not because it tastes much different from pizzas topped with asparagus in normal-sized pieces. This is one instance where I’m perfectly happy to be proven wrong.

*Second case in point: Pinterest itself, which I finally gave in and joined this past month. Turns out that despite the annoying qualities I’d foreseen (lots of insipid content to wade through, and the general championing of style over substance...or am I just feeling defensive because my rickety old Blogspot blog with the impatiently staged and poorly lit food photos looks so sad in comparison to most of what’s out there?), it’s precisely what I needed to organize my recipes-to-try after the sad, ugly decline of my longtime favorite Delicious. (I tried Pepperplate for a while, but it and other apps designed especially for recipes were too feature-rich for my taste. I don’t need to generate shopping lists, I just want to be able to bookmark web pages, tag them by category and see a photo—that’s it!) I just keep all my boards private, and I have to admit it’s pretty nifty…much like this pizza, to get back to my main point.

I had a hankering for something springy and fresh in the pizza department, so (inspired by a more recent iteration at A Cozy Kitchen) I dredged up this old recipe from Smitten Kitchen. It turns out that shaved asparagus, tossed with oil and red pepper flakes and a generous quantity of salt, creates a totally distinctive pizza experience. The fact that shaving the asparagus is somewhat awkward is actually a plus, because the mix of textures from the unevenly sized strips is really what sets this apart. All the ingredients melt dreamily together, with the occasional pop of a larger asparagus tip making its presence known. My only adaptations were to add red pepper flakes and a squeeze of lemon juice, neither of which were strictly needed, but they are so perfect with asparagus it’s hard to resist.

So better late than never, all aboard the bandwagon! Next spring I’m finally trying shaved asparagus salad.

1 pound pizza dough
½ to ¾ pound asparagus
¼ cup grated Parmesan
½ pound shredded mozzarella
2 teaspoons olive oil
½ teaspoon coarse salt
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
Several grinds black pepper
1 scallion, thinly sliced
Freshly squeezed lemon juice to taste

1. Preheat your oven to 450 degrees.
2. Prepare asparagus: No need to snap off ends; they can be your handles as you peel the asparagus. Holding a single asparagus spear by its tough end, lay it flat on a cutting board and use a vegetable peeler (a Y-shaped one works best here) to create long shavings of asparagus by drawing the peeler from the base to the top of the stalk. Repeat with remaining stalks and don’t fret some pieces are unevenly thick (such as the tip, which might be too thin to peel); the mixed textures give a great character to the pizza. Discard tough ends. Toss peelings in a medium bowl with olive oil, salt, red pepper flakes, and pepper to taste.
3. Roll or stretch out your pizza dough and transfer to a floured or cornmeal-dusted baking sheet. Sprinkle dough with Parmesan, then mozzarella. Pile asparagus on top. Bake pizza for 10 to 15 minutes, or until edges are browned, the cheese is bubbly and the asparagus might be lightly charred. Remove from the oven and immediately sprinkle with scallions, squeeze lemon juice over the top if desired, then slice and eat.

Serves: 4
Time: 35 minutes
Leftover potential: Good.

FRESHER ASPARAGUS SOUP

I have a perfectly serviceable “fresh asparagus soup” recipe in my archives, although I’ll admit I haven’t revisited it for several years. Nowadays, it’s tough to rotate through my vast repertoire of seasonal vegetable recipes before I either get tired of said veggies or the season is over. Asparagus is particularly challenging because I love it so much I get tempted by new variations every year, but the season for the really good farmers’ market stuff is relatively brief, even in Southern California.

I was apparently in a highly suggestible mood when this recipe from A Cozy Kitchen struck my fancy. It’s not radically different from my old one, but a bit more nuanced—shallot instead of onion, crème fraiche instead of yogurt and milk, no roux, a higher asparagus-to-liquid ratio, and some always-welcome added garlic. It also turned out to be a great test of my fancy new high-powered commercial-grade blender, which I acquired for free from a friend and which is amazing. In fact, I fear this soup might be a bit tough to render smoothly with a less powerful appliance like an immersion blender, because the asparagus is only boiled for a few minutes before pureeing. This (along with the baking soda in the cooking water) gives it a shockingly bright green hue, along with incredible freshness. The flavor is simple, springy and asparagus-forward. The minimal cooking also makes it incredibly quick to prepare: Sautee the aromatics, blanch the asparagus, blend, heat gently and garnish.

Other than doubling the recipe, the only change I made was to add a squeeze of lemon juice at the end, because lemon and asparagus were made for each other and I think nearly every soup needs more acid. I was trying to use up a previously-zested lemon, but if I’d had any to spare, I think lemon zest would have been an even better addition. The original recipe showed this served with grilled cheese, but that seemed to be gilding the lily a bit, so I opted for garlic bread instead.

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 shallots, peeled and minced
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
½ teaspoon baking soda
2 pounds asparagus, ends trimmed off, cut into 2-inch pieces
3 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
2 tablespoons creme fraiche, plus more for topping
2 tablespoons minced fresh chives
Optional: Lemon juice and/or zest to taste

1. In a small sauté pan, melt the butter over medium heat. Add the shallot and garlic and cook for 1 to 2 minutes, until softened. Remove from heat.
2. Prepare an ice bath for the asparagus and set aside. Fill a large pot with a few inches of water, set over medium heat, and add a few pinches of salt and the baking soda. When the water reaches a simmer, drop in the asparagus and cook for 2 minutes, until crisp-tender. Drain and transfer to the ice bath. Drain again and press out any water in the asparagus.
3. Add the garlic-shallot mixture and asparagus to blender, along with the chicken stock. Blend until very smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the creme fraiche and 1 teaspoon salt. Give it one more mix and adjust the salt to taste.
4. Transfer soup back to the pot (if you like, you can run it through a sieve first for extra smoothness) and warm over low heat. Ladle into bowls and top with a dollop of creme fraiche and chives, plus a squeeze of lemon juice or sprinkle of zest if desired.

Serves: 4-6
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good.

ASPARAGUS CARBONARA

Despite being a lifelong fan of Calvin Trillin, who has famously claimed that spaghetti carbonara should replace turkey as the national Thanksgiving dish, I had never made (or, I think, even eaten) carbonara before—initially because I was grossed out by undercooked egg yolks, and more recently because I was afraid I would love it insatiably and perilously. But when The Brewer and the Baker posted this recipe last spring, I no longer had good reason to resist. Here we have a two-to-one ratio of springy green vegetables to pasta, perhaps not enough to counteract the richness of the bacon, egg and cheese, but enough to feel like a reasonable one-dish weeknight meal—and, honestly, much more interesting and appealing to me than plain old carbonara.

This is one of those recipes that comes together so quickly, it behooves you to have everything prepped and ready to go before you start. I always thought making carbonara was tricky, but the technique doesn’t get any more advanced than tempering eggs, which basically means stirring a little hot liquid into them so they warm up slowly and don’t immediately cook and congeal. Beyond that, the only hard part is the timing—making sure your noodles and your sauce come together at exactly the right moment. The good news is that if you muck it up a little bit, as I did the first time—foolishly believing that I could simplify things by simply mixing the pasta with the sauce in the hot skillet—and your eggs scramble a little instead of turning into a smooth sauce, it will still taste pretty great. When I returned to this recipe a year later and actually followed the directions precisely, it was even better. Working quickly and confidently is the key…and practice makes perfect, so clearly I’m going to have to try the entire range of spinoff recipes: Roasted cauliflower, my new BFF! Roasted broccoli! Spinach and sweet potato! What vegetable wouldn’t taste amazing in a peppery, smoky-salty, cheesy, magically creamy-without-a-drop-of-cream sauce? (Beets, probably.)

8 ounces spaghetti or other long pasta
1 teaspoon olive oil
4 slices bacon, cut into cubes
¾ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 to 1¼ pounds asparagus, trimmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2/3 cup grated Parmesan, plus more for garnish
Salt to taste

1. Heat a large pot of salted water to a boil for cooking the pasta. (If your asparagus is very thick or you like it very tender, once the water boils you can blanch your asparagus in it for a few minutes to give it a head start on cooking, removing it with a slotted spoon to a colander before adding the pasta to the same pot.)
2. Meanwhile, heat olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Cook bacon pieces to a crisp and remove bacon with a slotted spoon to a large bowl.
3. When the water boils, add the pasta and cook until al dente. Reserve ¾ cup of pasta water before draining.
4. Add black pepper to bacon drippings in skillet and cook for two minutes. Add asparagus and cook about 5 minutes, until fork-tender, stirring occasionally.
5. Whisk egg, yolk, 2/3 cup Parmesan, and ¼ cup very hot pasta water in the bowl with the bacon.
6. Add drained pasta and the contents of the asparagus skillet to the bowl and toss, adding splashes of reserved pasta water to create a creamy sauce. Season with salt to taste and serve topped with extra Parmesan.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good.

STRAWBERRY AND ASPARAGUS SALAD

Asparagus + strawberries + mint + lemon = spring in a bowl. Add feta and spinach and you can’t hold me back. I might never have thought to combine these exact ingredients before stumbling across this salad from Bev Cooks on the magical Interwebs, but of course they go together brilliantly. (I’ve already combined strawberries and avocado, so why not strawberries and asparagus?) I doubled the recipe to serve four (as a side), swapped the feta in for goat cheese (not my fave), and upped the lemon juice ratio in the dressing (I like mine acidic). I used salted pepitas because I happened to have some on hand, and I did like them against the sweetness of the strawberries, but I think a lot of other options would work well here, too—pecans, sunflowers seeds, almonds, or even walnuts. The lemon-mint dressing was particularly nice; I had contemplated trying some sort of balsamic dressing instead, worried about the mint being too overpowering and weird, but it was subtle, just enough to add a crisp and refreshing aftertaste, and kept this salad on the delicate side, which is perfect for spring. I ate some leftover dressing on plain spinach later in the week and it was so good on its own that I started envisioning using it on other fruit-with-greens salads throughout the summer (I bet it would be nice with blueberries or peaches).

1 bunch (about ½ pound or less) asparagus, ends trimmed, stalks sliced into 2-inch pieces
10 mint leaves
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
About 3 cups baby spinach
About 1 cup strawberries, rinsed and thinly sliced
¼ cup pepitas, toasted
¼ cup crumbled feta or goat cheese

1. Bring a medium pot of salted water to a boil. Add the asparagus and cook until bright green and crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Drain and cool in an ice bath or under cold running water. Pat dry.

2. Using a mini food processor or an immersion blender, combine the mint leaves with the oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

3. Arrange the spinach in a bowl or on a plate. Top with sliced strawberries, blanched asparagus, toasted pepitas, crumbled cheese, and a good drizzle of the lemon-mint dressing.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: OK, but you should store the components separately and assemble them only when ready to eat.

ASPARAGUS, PROSCIUTTO, EGG, AND PICKLED ONION SANDWICHES

This is the most beautiful sandwich I’ve ever made. It just says “spring” all over, with its delicate hues of pastel green, yellow, and pink and its Eastery flavors of ham, eggs, asparagus, lemon, and dill. I can’t take any credit; I never would have come up with it on my own, especially since I’m not a huge sandwich maker/eater, and in fact I don’t think it would ever have occurred to me to put asparagus on a sandwich at all. (Recipe is from the always-helpful Kitchn.) And it certainly wasn’t any great achievement to put together—boil egg, sear asparagus, slice things, and stack. But it looks and tastes like a work of art. The combination of ingredients initially surprised me, but they work together so well it seems almost inevitable—grassy, tart, creamy, salty, bright, herby, and savory in perfect balance. I’m already jonesing for this again (and this time I’ll double the recipe because I hear the sandwiches are just as good if not better the next day), so I imagine it will be a staple meal for us as long as asparagus is in season.

The only major change I made to the original was to add prosciutto, which was suggested in the comments, and it was the ideal party guest, sliced so thin that it didn’t overwhelm its gentler companions, but adding just a tinge of meaty substance and chew. However, vegetarians can feel free to leave it out without missing too much. I was actually thinking that sliced radishes might be a good addition as well, or maybe it's just that they’d fit in so well with the springy theme and color scheme. If I try it, I’ll let you know.

My sole complaint was not with the recipe, but with my ingredients: my baguette (purchased from Trader Joe’s earlier that day) was extremely hard. I microwaved it a bit, skipped the toasting step, and was generous with the liquid components, but it still made biting and chewing these sandwiches a real workout for our jaws. If I can’t get a better baguette next time, I might consider toasted ciabatta or a softer sandwich roll instead.

2 eggs
1 medium shallot, thinly sliced (or a few tablespoons of diced red onion)
¼ cup red wine vinegar
Half a bunch of asparagus spears (about 15–30, depending on thickness)
Olive oil to taste
2 small baguettes (or a similar portion of a larger baguette, enough for two sandwiches about the same length as your asparagus spears)
Dijon mustard to taste
4 slices prosciutto
Fresh dill to taste
Freshly squeezed lemon juice to taste
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Hard-boil the eggs and set aside.

2. Place the red wine vinegar in a small bowl, add the sliced shallot and a few pinches of salt, and stir. Set aside to pickle while you make the rest of the sandwich.

3. Trim the asparagus by cutting off the woody ends; try to get the spears to a roughly uniform length, about the same length as your bread. If the spears are thick, cut them in half lengthwise. In a large skillet over high heat, add a little oil. Sear the asparagus spears, about 3 or 4 minutes on each side. You want a little bit of char, so don't move the asparagus very often. Remove from skillet and set aside.

 4. Split bread in half lengthwise; toast lightly if desired. Brush the top half with a little olive oil; spread mustard on the bottom half. Place two slices of prosciutto atop each mustard-covered piece, then add half the asparagus to each sandwich. Peel and slice the eggs and add half of the slices to each sandwich. Top with dill and pickled onions, then season with salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon to taste.

Serves: 2
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: I haven’t tried it, but the original recipe says it will keep a day in the fridge and might be even better the next day, although the bread will lose its crustiness.

WARM SPINACH SALAD WITH SAUSAGE AND ROASTED VEGETABLES

I did a pretty good job of overcoming my slight resentment of main-dish salads this past summer; thanks to recipes like this, this, and this, we quite happily ate salad as an entrée almost once a week. As winter approaches, raw, cold meals become far less appealing, yet I don’t want to break this healthy Salad Night habit completely. I have a couple of warm salad recipes, but now I’m on the prowl for more. I have no idea what series of link-clickings led me to this one at For the Love of Cooking, but why even bother talking about that when we should be talking about how much this salad kicks ass? Yes, I just swore, albeit mildly, about a salad, on a blog that my mother reads. That’s how good it is. If I were talking to you about it in person, I might swear downright emphatically. WE $@*!ing LOVED THIS #&!% SALAD.

Really, this is quite similar to a recipe I already have, but served over spinach, with a balsamic Dijon vinaigrette and some cheese on top, additions I would have never thought to make. It manages to be simultaneously wholesome and hearty, with all the fresh and colorful appeal of a salad in a warm, filling, satisfying meal. The combination of vegetables is perfect; along with the expected onion, potatoes, and garlic, you get asparagus (which, sure, may not exactly be in season right now, but we all know how awesome it is when roasted), mushrooms (which I never think to roast but are great that way), and tomatoes (which I have a whole treatise on; see below). Although I usually roll my eyes when some online recipe commenter talks about how they added chicken to a perfectly good vegetarian dish to “make it a meal,” as though meals are somehow not complete without meat products, I gotta say that the savory, meaty sausage does really make this feel like a meal. The spinach wilts gently under all this caramelized, roasty goodness. The dressing adds moisture and a welcome zesty acidity, and the feta does its usual salty, creamy, fabulous thing. All that and it’s easy to throw together on a weeknight.

I made only minimal changes. I probably ended up using more vegetables than called for—I got greedy when picking out my mix of cute little potatoes, and I threw in the whole 8-ounce package of mushrooms and the entire bunch of asparagus because I didn’t want to get stuck with the orphaned vegetables. The original recipe called for 12 ounces of spinach, which, although it’s technically 4 servings according to the nutritional information on the package, is a tremendous quantity in its raw state; maybe my vegetables and sausage weren’t piping-hot enough to wilt the greens sufficiently when I put the salad together, but that amount of spinach wouldn’t have fit in any of my entrée bowls. I just eyeballed it, using one to two generous handfuls of spinach per serving, which probably came to more like 8 or even 6 ounces total.

I also used cherry tomatoes instead of the little on-the-vine ones used in the original recipe or the plum ones used in its Real Simple source. I’ve recently fallen in love with roasted cherry tomatoes (the maple syrup in the recipe I use sounds weird, but go with it! It adds a sweet smokiness without tasting anything like pancakes; I typically scarf them all straight off the baking sheet before I can manage to take a photo of them, which is why I haven’t posted the recipe yet), but of course the key to the ones I’m used to is letting them roast face-up, undisturbed, until they dry and wrinkle. Here, roasting the tomatoes with the other vegetables and tossing them periodically, they break down quite a bit, so their juices leak out and spread over the baking sheet, meaning that all the vegetables turned out much less crisp than I’d envisioned. I think this could be resolved by either (a) roasting the tomatoes ahead of time using my usual recipe (I’ve been meaning to try adding those to salads anyhow, if I can ever stop snacking on them) or (b) roasting the tomatoes at the same time as the other vegetables, but undisturbed on a second baking sheet, not to mention there’s always the option of (c) just using larger tomatoes as the original recipe does. I may give one of those methods a try in the near future just for kicks, but I don’t know if any changes are really necessary, because the recipe turned out so damn delicious just as I made it, and it’s certain to be a Salad Night staple for us throughout the winter.

UPDATE, 1/13: If the idea of out-of-season asparagus doesn't appeal, substitute a couple of handfuls of trimmed green beans, cut into 1-to-2-inch pieces. It's just as excellent.

1 cup cherry, grape, or plum tomatoes, halved
1 medium red onion, sliced into wedges
1 cup baby potatoes, halved, or quartered if larger (I used a mix of yellow, red, and purple)
1 cup mushrooms, quartered (I used cremini)
1 bunch (about 12 spears) asparagus, tough ends removed, remaining spears cut into 2-inch pieces
4 large cloves garlic, with skins left on
1 tablespoon olive oil
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
4 Italian sausages (I used Trader Joe’s Garlic and Herb Chicken Sausage, which I highly recommend)
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons coarse-grain Dijon mustard
1 small clove garlic, minced
6 to 12 ounces fresh spinach
2 to 4 ounces feta cheese, crumbled

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with tin foil and coat with cooking spray. Place the tomatoes, onions, potatoes, mushrooms, and 4 whole unpeeled garlic cloves on the baking sheet. Drizzle with 1 tablespoon olive oil and season with salt and pepper to taste. Place in the oven and roast for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the asparagus and continue to roast for 10 minutes, or until the asparagus and potatoes are fork-tender.

2. While the vegetables are roasting, make the salad dressing by whisking the vinegar, 3 tablespoons olive oil, mustard, water, and 1 small minced garlic clove together in a small bowl until emulsified, then season with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Also while the vegetables are roasting, cook the sausages in a skillet over medium heat for 10 minutes or until done.

4. Once the veggies are out of the oven, carefully remove the skin from the garlic cloves and then slice the roasted garlic. Toss the warm vegetables (including the garlic) and sliced sausages with the spinach and dressing until evenly coated. Top with feta.

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: Good, if not yet mixed together. Store all the elements (roasted vegetables and sausage, spinach, dressing, and cheese) separately, and when you want to eat them, reheat the vegetables and sausage and then add to the spinach, dressing, and cheese.

SPRING POTATO SALAD

I toyed with a few (non-mayonnaise) potato salad recipes over the last couple of summers, but aside from this one (which, at least the way I make it, is more of a leafy green salad with potatoes in it), never settled on one I could wholeheartedly embrace. Part of the problem, I think, was that I had not yet evolved into the mustard fiend I now seem to have become. To keep a potato salad from being bland, you need a big, bold dressing, and mustard can be very kind to potatoes. Another issue is the other vegetables involved; I don’t adore potatoes enough to consider them "salad" in their own right, and some veggies complement them better than others. Several of the non-winning recipes used tomatoes and peppers, which didn’t do it for me. My favorite pairings with potatoes are green: asparagus and green beans. And of course, I have a recent interest in radishes, so when I saw Smitten Kitchen's gorgeous spring potato salad featuring all those elements, plus another one of my growing obsessions, pickled vegetables, the deal was sealed.

This salad rocks. It’s wholesome, delectable, and beautiful. The mustard-laden vinaigrette packs a wonderful punch, and the sweet-sour pickled onions are the coup de gras. As I learned from an earlier Smitten Kitchen recipe, a quick soak in sugared and salted vinegar takes just the right amount of bite out of raw onions to keep them from overwhelming the rest of a salad (and you from reeking for the rest of the evening), as well as adding a delicious zip, and this particular version, made with delicate spring onions, is so mild you can snack on them straight. And you will probably have leftovers (although after eating the salad, I decided I could have put in more of the onions), so you can do just that—or try adding them to sandwiches, grilled meat, or other salads later in the week.

We devoured big bowls of this as a main dish for dinner, with small grilled chicken thighs on the side, and then again for lunch the next day, and I’ll probably make it again next week. I’m sure you could mess around with the vegetable ingredients however you wanted (I substituted green beans for the peas Deb used, because A hates peas and the potato-green bean combo is so good, and tweaked the ingredient proportions slightly based on availability—a bit less potato, a few more green beans), but this version is perfect for me. Good thing summer weather has been slow to arrive in Southern California, because I could happily eat this springy salad all year long.

1¾ pounds small new or fingerling potatoes in assorted colors
1 pound asparagus
½ pound green beans
4 medium radishes, thinly sliced

Pickled spring onions:
3 spring onions (about 6 ounces)
¼ cup white wine vinegar
¼ cup water
1 tablespoon coarse kosher salt
1½ teaspoons sugar

Sharp mustard vinaigrette:
¼ cup olive oil
2 tablespoons whole-grain mustard
2 teaspoons smooth Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place potatoes in a medium saucepan and cover with one inch of water. Bring to a boil and cook for about 15 minutes, or you can easily pierces a potato with the tip of a knife. Drain the potatoes and let them cool until they’re almost room temperature. You can hasten this by covering them with cold water, and replacing the water a few times as it warms up.

2. Meanwhile, pickle your spring onions. Whisk vinegar, water, salt, and sugar together in the bottom of a small container with a lid until the salt and sugar dissolve. Slice the onion bulbs and paler green parts into very thin coins and submerge them in the vinegar mixture. Cover and put in fridge until you’re ready to use them; if you can put them aside for an hour or even overnight, even better. Reserve the onion greens.

3. Refill the saucepan you used for the potatoes with salted water and bring it to a boil. Trim the tough ends off the asparagus and slice the ends off the green beans; cut both vegetables into ½-inch pieces. Once the water is boiling, add the asparagus and the green beans. Two minutes later or when vegetables are crisp-tender, drain them, rinse them under cold water until cool, drain again, and spread them out on towel to absorb excess water.

4. Place the asparagus, green beans, and sliced radishes in a large bowl. Chop potatoes into moderate-sized chunks and add them to the bowl. Cut some of the reserved onion greens into thin slivers (no need to use all of them) and add them to the bowl.

5. When you’re ready to serve the salad, or an hour or two in advance, whisk the dressing ingredients and toss it with the vegetables, to taste. Stir in as many pickled onion coins as you please. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste.

Serves: 4−6
Time: 1 hour
Leftover potential: OK. The salad was still very tasty the next day, but the acid in the vinaigrette had discolored the asparagus and green beans somewhat. If you want to make this ahead, it would probably be better to chill all the vegetables separately in the fridge overnight and wait until the last minute to combine them and add the dressing.

QUINOA WITH ASPARAGUS AND LEMON

Quinoa! It looks kinda freaky (something about all those tiny dots just makes me uncomfortable, the way fish roe does), but it tastes delicious (mild, a bit nutty), has an addictive texture (fluffy, slightly chewy), and is crazy good for you (chock full of protein, fiber, phosphorus, magnesium, and iron). Not to mention that it’s a really fun word to type and say.

Like just about everyone, I’m trying to incorporate more grains into my diet. (Zzzz, I know.) Also, for my own entertainment, I some need new meal platforms; my favorite things to cook are one-dish dinners that combine a starch with a bunch of vegetables and herbs, but one can (or should, at least) only eat so much pasta and I don’t really like rice. Exploring the exciting frontier of grains, especially with summer salad season fast approaching, gives me a whole new category of recipes to try, and I’ve been eagerly a-bookmarkin’ in anticipation.

A few weeks ago, I ate dinner with my friend P, who’s recently been diagnosed with a host of food allergies, including an allergy to wheat. So one of the things she cooked for me was quinoa, and it was so tasty I was inspired to cook it myself for the first time. Sifting through quinoa recipes on Food Blog Search, I encountered this one from Eggs on Sunday, which seemed like the perfect gateway drug, dovetailing perfectly with my annual obsession with asparagus and lemon.

I could tell that A was a little suspicious of the quinoa, but he sampled it gamely (I served proscuitto-wrapped chicken on the side to soften the blow). In pitching the dish to him, I had lamely described it as “sort of like rice or couscous, but better”; after tasting it, he amended, “It’s like how I always wish couscous could be.” In other words: thumbs up. I followed the recipe exactly and found it easy and thoroughly delicious—however, the lemon flavor is strong, so if you’re not a crazy lemon fan like me, you might consider dialing down the lemon juice or zest to start out with (you can always add more later). I've classified this as a side dish, but there's no reason you couldn't eat a big bowl of it as a light meal on its own. As a bonus, it's especially pretty, with the pink shallots adding a nice pastel accent to the green asparagus and pale-yellow grain. This will be a certain addition to my spring menu rotation, and I’m now officially emboldened to experiment further with quinoa. Quin-yeah!

1 cup quinoa, well rinsed
2 cups water
1 pound asparagus, cut into ½-inch pieces
1 tablespoon lemon zest
¼ cup lemon juice
1 tablespoon chopped chives
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 shallot, minced
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Rinse 1 cup quinoa well under cold water, then place it in a saucepan with 2 cups water. Bring to a boil, then turn down and simmer until the water is absorbed, about 15 minutes.

2. While the quinoa is cooking, mix the lemon juice in a small bowl with the minced shallot, a good pinch (about ½ tsp) of coarse salt, and a few good grindings of fresh black pepper. Whisk to combine, then drizzle in the 3 tablespoons olive oil, whisking all the time. Add the lemon zest and the chopped herbs, and whisk to combine.

3. When the quinoa is done cooking, transfer it to a large mixing bowl and pour the vinaigrette over it, then stir with a fork or large spoon to coat the quinoa.

4. Fill your saucepan back up with water and bring it to a rolling boil with enough coarse salt to season the water. Add the pieces of asparagus to the boiling water and cook for 1 minute. Drain the asparagus and run some cold water over it to stop the cooking process.

5. Add the asparagus to the quinoa and stir to combine. Taste and adjust the seasonings, if needed.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good. I even ate some five days later and it was still decent. I reheated it in the microwave, but you could also try eating it cold, for more of a salad-like effect.

ASPARAGUS AND MUSHROOM PIZZA

Oops. When I promised an end to the asparagus recipes yesterday, I had forgotten that I had this one waiting on deck. But I assure you, it’s worth breaking my promise for. I adapted it from a Bon Appetit tart recipe I saw at Serious Eats. The topping sounded deliciously springy with the lemon, thyme, and crème fraiche, but I didn’t really want another recipe that involves puff pastry. It’s delicious and all, but it’s also expensive, pretty high in fat, and markedly less tasty when reheated—not to mention that Trader Joe’s seems to have retired its all-butter puff pastry sheets, the only non-trans-fat puff pastry product I could find. Give me a pizza crust any day, I thought as I read the recipe. Then I realized that this would probably work pretty well as a pizza, so I decided to go ahead and give it a try. And I’m glad I did, because I really liked the result. The ingredients complemented each other beautifully, and the crème fraiche added a silky texture that, while a bit unusual for a pizza sauce, was pleasantly addictive. I almost think this would almost be too rich as a tart, with that cream and cheese atop a buttery pastry crust (not to mention that the original recipe used twice as much butter as I did for sautéing the mushrooms), smothering the poor fresh vegetables. Pizza crust provided a lighter, more neutral platform the allowed the flavors to shine.


Dough for 1 pizza (about 1 pound)
1 tablespoon butter
8 ounces cremini mushrooms, halved and then thinly sliced
½ teaspoon coarse kosher salt, divided
½ teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper, divided
½ pound thin fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut on the diagonal into 1-inch pieces
¾ teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
¾ teaspoon finely grated lemon peel
¼ cup crème fraîche
¼ cup (packed) coarsely grated Gruyere cheese (about 1 ounce)

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

2. Melt butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms; sprinkle with ¼ teaspoon coarse salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper. Sauté until tender and lightly browned, about 4 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool 5 minutes. Add asparagus, chopped thyme, lemon peel, ¼ teaspoon coarse salt, ¼ teaspoon pepper, and crème fraîche to mushrooms and mix well.

3. Roll out dough and place on a baking sheet or pizza pan. Spread mushroom-asparagus mixture evenly over dough and sprinkle Gruyere over the top.

4. Bake about 15 minutes, until crust is browned.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good

SPAGHETTI WITH ASPARAGUS AND PINK TOMATO SAUCE

Another step in my continuing quest to collect a pasta recipe for every possible vegetable combination. Sure, I have many asparagus pasta recipes already, but this is the only one with tomatoes. This is how you end up with a pasta archive so massive you could eat a different pasta dish every week for a year.

Actually, this recipe is another oldie from Jack Bishop's Pasta e Verdura that I've been making for many years, but not often enough lately to get it onto the blog. There are certainly no surprises here, just spaghetti, steamed asparagus, tomatoes, pine nuts, basil, and Parmesan in a lightly creamy sauce. But it is extremely delicious. The prep work seems a little fussy, but once you've toasted your pine nuts, steamed your asparagus, and chopped your tomatoes, everything flies together quite quickly with a minimum of cooking.

Did you notice that this is my third new asparagus recipe in the past month? I've been on a kick, cooking asparagus once a week, sometimes twice! If you're not a fan, don't worry; the season is nearly over here in SoCal, so my mania will be subsiding soon.

1½ pounds asparagus
1½ pounds plum tomatoes
¼ cup pine nuts
3 tablespoons olive oil
4 medium cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
¼ cup minced fresh basil leaves
3 tablespoons heavy cream
1 pound spaghetti
⅔ cup freshly grated Parmesan

1. Set a large skillet over medium heat, add the pine nuts, and toast—shaking the pan occasionally—until golden brown, about 5 minutes. Remove pine nuts from pan and set aside.

2. Snap the tough ends off the asparagus, cut spears in half lengthwise, then slice into 1-inch pieces. Steam until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes. Set aside.

3. Core and seed the tomatoes and then chop them into ½-inch chunks and set aside.

4. Bring 4 quarts salted water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente.

5. Meanwhile, in the same skillet you used for the pine nuts, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the garlic and sauté until lightly colored, about 2 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Cook until tomatoes are just heated through, 2–3 minutes.

6. Stir the basil and cream into the pan and cook until cream has thickened and reduced a bit, about 1 minute. Stir in the asparagus and mix well. Cook until heated through, 1–2 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper.

7. Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce, the toasted pine nuts, and the Parmesan. Mix well and serve with more cheese if desired.

Serves: 6
Time: 40 minutes
Leftover potential: High

PENNE WITH ASPARAGUS, RICOTTA, AND BASIL

As the five-year anniversary of this blog approacheth (that’s how we used to talk in the olden days before the Internet, you know), I wonder how this is still possible: Here we have a very nice pasta recipe (from my old standby, Jack Bishop’s Pasta e Verdura) that I feel I’ve made many times, but somehow I’ve never posted it. Has it really been years since I last cooked it? Or did it just slip through the cracks?

I was reminded of this pasta while eating my recent asparagus, ricotta, and salami pizza, so I had to make it this week and finally share it with you. It’s creamy, delicately flavored, springy, and remarkably easy—no sautéing required, even: just boil, steam, and mix. There are no bold tastes here, so be sure to use a generous hand with the salt and pepper; in fact, I found myself thinking that a little lemon zest mixed into the ricotta might be the very thing to take this up to the next level. But in the meantime, I have been eating the leftovers all week and can vouch that the current level is very nice indeed.

2 pounds asparagus
1⅓ cups ricotta cheese
⅔ cup freshly grated Parmesan
½ cup minced fresh basil
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 pound penne pasta

1. Bring 4 quarts of salted water to a boil to cook the pasta.

2. Meanwhile, snap off the tough ends of the asparagus and cut the spears in half lengthwise, then slice them into 1-inch-long pieces. Steam until crisp-tender, about 2 minutes.

3. Combine the two cheeses with the basil, salt, and pepper in a medium bowl. Set aside.

4. Cook the pasta until al dente. Just before it is done, carefully remove ⅓ cup of the cooking water and stir it into the cheese mixture. The cheese sauce should be smooth and creamy.

5. Drain the pasta, making sure some water still clings to the noodles. Toss the hot pasta with the ricotta mixture and asparagus. Mix well to coat the pasta with the sauce.

Serves: 6
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: High.

ASPARAGUS, RICOTTA, AND SALAMI PIZZA

Yum. And also, YUM. While I do like asparagus and ricotta together (I have a good recipe for penne with asparagus and ricotta that for some reason I’ve never posted), it would not have occurred to me to add salami to the mix, or even to add salami to a pizza at all—even though I love salami, and it’s hardly different from that most ubiquitous of all pizza toppings, pepperoni. (While I was making this pizza, A told me that when he traveled to Germany in high school, he was dismayed to discover that ordering a pepperoni pizza got you a pizza covered in pepperoncini, and when he finally spotted a pizza that looked like it had American-style pepperoni, it was in fact salami. So there you go.) Anyway, I’m so glad I gave this recipe from Eggs on Sunday a try, because it’s more than just a way to use up the leftover ricotta in the container while taking advantage of asparagus season. I was a bit worried it would be bland, but instead it was just delicately, elegantly, awesome. Salami—salty, peppery, and prettily pink—is the perfect complement, both visually and...er...flavorfully?, to the milky cheese and sweet, grassy asparagus.

I just eyeballed all the quantities and I think I used more asparagus (and maybe more salami and mozzarella; maybe my pizza was larger, or maybe I just like it topping-heavy?) and less ricotta than the original recipe, but I was really happy with the results. Because my ricotta supply was meager, I ended up spreading it thinly and evenly over the dough instead of dolloping it, and because it seemed easier I grated my mozzarella instead of tearing it, both of which made for a nice, moist, creamy layer underlying the asparagus and salami.


Pizza dough for 1 pizza (about 1 pound)
1 bunch asparagus, cut into 2-inch pieces, steamed briefly and then rinsed in cold water
¼ cup salami, sliced into thin ribbons
½ to ¾ cup ricotta cheese
A good handful of fresh mozzarella cheese, grated or torn into pieces (I used maybe ¼ pound?)

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Stretch out your pizza dough and lay it out on a pizza peel or baking sheet that’s been generously dusted with cornmeal.

2. Scatter bits of the ricotta all over the crust (or spread it evenly, if you are a neatnik). Sprinkle with the pieces of fresh mozzarella cheese, then with the pieces of steamed asparagus and ribbons of salami.

3. Bake the pizza for about 8 minutes, until the crust is golden brown and the cheese has melted.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes
Leftover potential: Good

PAN-FRIED LEMON-RICOTTA GNOCCHI

I’ve been wanting to try making my own pasta for a while now, but am basically too lazy/scared, so I use my lack of hardware as an excuse (I’m still waiting for Santa to bring me that KitchenAid pasta roller attachment). Gnocchi seems slightly more manageable, but it’s still a lot of work to boil and mash all those potatoes, and my few early attempts, back when I was just beginning to cook for myself on a regular basis, were less than inspiring (granted, I think I could do a lot better now, armed with slightly improved kitchen skillz and a perfect recipe). But when I saw this recipe for ricotta gnocchi at Steamy Kitchen and realized I’m out of excuses. The fact that the gnocchi were pan-fried all crispy and brown, instead of the pale soggy lumpen things gnocchi can sometimes be, was the final nail in the coffin. I had some extra ricotta in the fridge anyway, so I chalked it up to destiny.

I suppose that coffin metaphor might become all too apt if I start eating too much ricotta gnocchi. It occurred to me as I was cooking that it’s just basically lemon-flavored cheese fried in butter. Then I took my first bite and I didn’t care. This is fantastic stuff, crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. Eat a small bowl every now and then, with a gigantic salad (or in our case, a big pile of roasted aspararagus) on the side and you will live a happy life. What’s more, the recipe takes hardly any time and requires zero special skills. (Can you mix things in a bowl? Mush them around with your fingers? Cut dough into pieces? Bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan? Oops, sorry, I started singing for a minute there.) Rolling the dough into ropes was about as hard as it got, and certainly that didn’t even require much precision; it was mostly cosmetic anyway. I’m sure you could cook this in ugly dollops and it would taste just as good. You’ll notice my gnocchi got somewhat big and square, and I still loved them. I don’t judge a book by its cover, or a lemony cheese ball by its shape or lack thereof.

I’d be interested in trying to actually serve the gnocchi mixed up with some vegetables, as seen on the Smitten Kitchen with pan-fried potato gnocchi (drool...it’s that photo of the gnocchi with the tomatoes and green beans and white beans in a warm pasta-saladlike treatment that made me want to make my own gnocchi in the first place). Not only would it taste great, but it would diminish the classy-version-of-State-Fair-cheese-curds guilty undertone I kept feeling while I ate this. But seriously, it's truly a magical recipe, the kind you (yes, you!) should try right away. Because mostly, I was too busy thinking (even though I can’t take credit for the recipe) “This is awesome! I’m a genius!” as I ate to really worry about anything except getting the next forkful to my mouth. And that is always a nice feeling.

Also, did you notice that my lemon obsession is continuing unabated?

P.S. June 2008: I cemented my genius reputation by making this again, this time tossing the gnocchi and its buttery sauce with blanched asparagus between steps 3 and 4 of the recipe. Bingo! The asparagus adds a new dimension of flavor (greenness!), while acting as a natural complement to the cheese and lemon. If possible, it was even more delicious than last time, and erased the I'm-eating-a-big-bowl-of-fried-cheese feeling. And it was really pretty. See, look!


1 cup whole-milk ricotta (if you use skim-milk ricotta, you may have to use more flour because the ricotta will be more watery)
½ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (plus extra for garnishing)
1 large egg yolk
1 teaspoon lemon zest (plus extra for garnishing)
1 teaspoon coarse kosher salt (or ½ teaspoon regular salt)
1 tablespoon minced parsley (plus extra for garnishing)
¾ cup all-purpose flour (spooned in and leveled)
¼ to ½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon olive oil
Black pepper to taste

1. Combine ricotta, ½ cup Parmesan, egg yolk, 1 teaspoon lemon zest, salt, and 1 tablespoon parsley in a large bowl. Mix well. Sprinkle half of the flour over the mixture and gently turn a few times with a spatula to incorporate it. Dump the mixture on a clean, lightly floured work surface. Sprinkle the remaining flour on top of the mixture and gently knead with your fingertips, just bringing the dough together until the flour is incorporated. (This should only take a minute or two; any longer and you will be overkneading.)

2. Divide the dough into four equal parts. Take each part and roll it into a long log, 1 inch in diameter. Cut each log into 1-inch-long pieces.

3. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and olive oil. When butter is just lightly browned, add gnocchi in a single layer. Fry for 2 minutes, then flip them over. Sprinkle with red pepper flakes and fry for another 2 minutes. Taste one to see if it’s done—if you taste the flour, it needs to cook longer.

4. Serve with a sprinkling of lemon zest, Parmesan, parsley, and black pepper.

Serves: 2ish
Time: 30 minutes

RISOTTO WITH VEGETABLES

I haven’t been doing much cooking lately, because A’s out of town for the Fourth of July. I’d envisioned spending my free time during this solitary week in the kitchen, whipping up elaborate delicacies too ambitious or impractical or non-A-friendly to make on an ordinary day. But then temperatures soared into the 90s, and our kitchen faucet clogged again (postscript: it’s fixed now, maybe for good—KNOCK ON WOOD), and suddenly the last thing I wanted to do was spend time in the kitchen. Last night I sweated through the making of a batch of Pasta Ascuitta that I figure will pretty much last me all week, supplemented with some easy sandwiches, salads, and snacks. And pizza, of course. ’Tis the glory of the bachelor life.

Lucky for you, I still have a backlog of recipes to post, so here’s a risotto recipe I’ve had for ages. I think it might be from, of all places, the pedestrian red-and-white-checkered Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Whatevs, it’s full of cheese and vegetables and totally tasty. Even A, the purported risotto-hater, agrees.

2 cups sliced mushrooms
½ cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup Arborio rice
3–4 cups vegetable or chicken broth
¾ cup bite-sized asparagus or broccoli pieces
¾ cup seeded and diced tomato
¼ cup shredded carrot
1 cup shredded Fontina or Muenster cheese (4 ounces)
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons minced fresh basil or parsley

1. In a saucepan, bring broth to boiling; reduce heat and simmer.

2. While broth is heating, heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Sauté mushrooms, onion, and garlic until onion is tender. Add uncooked rice and cook, stirring, over medium heat about 5 minutes or until rice is golden.

3. Slowly add 1 cup of broth to the rice mixture, stirring constantly. Continue to cook and stir over medium heat until liquid is absorbed. Add another ½ cup broth and the asparagus or broccoli, stirring constantly. Continue to cook and stir until liquid is absorbed. Add another 1 cup broth, ½ cup at a time, stirring constantly until liquid is absorbed. (This should take about 15 minutes.)

4. Stir in the remaining ½ cup broth, the tomato, and the carrot. Cook and stir until rice is slightly creamy and just tender (add more broth or water and let it be absorbed, if necessary). Stir in cheese and basil or parsley.

Serves: 4
Time: 45 minutes

FLATBREAD WITH ASPARAGUS AND SPRING ONIONS

Asparagus week continues! I tore this recipe out of a recent issue of Cooking Light, tried it for the first time a few weeks ago, and really liked it. The toppings are a slam dunk: they reminded me of that awesome, bygone Sidney’s asparagus-and-Brie pizza I mentioned a few days ago, even though it uses Fontina instead (hmm, I wonder if I could substitute Brie?). Plus, it was a noble use of those handsome spring onions I’m always seeing at the farmers’ market. I suspect, however, that the flatbread itself might not quite be worth the trouble it took to make. The recipe does warn that the dough will be sticky, but my dough was very sticky. Probably because I hadn’t been able to find bread flour at my grocery store, so I’d just used all-purpose instead. I realize that if I don’t use the specified ingredients it’s my fault when the result isn’t exactly right, but any recipe that wants me to clutter up my cupboard with some kind of specialty flour gets a demerit in my book anyway.

Since the recipe makes 2 flatbreads that each (ostensibly) serve 6, I’d decided to just make one flatbread. I halved the topping quantities, but the flatbread recipe seemed harder to halve, so I just made the full recipe and then split the dough into two pieces after it had risen, thinking I’d use one half and freeze the other to use another time. But the dough was so hard to roll out—not only was it sticky, but it also tore easily—and I added so much flour in trying to shape it that I ruined the first flatbread and had to throw it away. Good thing I had another piece of dough handy.

For all that work and mess, the flatbread turned out just about average. The texture was nice—tender with a crispy bottom—but with Trader Joe’s selling balls of really great premade pizza dough for just 99 cents, I’m tempted to just scrap the flatbread-from-scratch part of the recipe and turn these tasty toppings into a more convenient meal I can make more often—and on average weeknights, at that. I’ll let you know how it goes, but for now, here’s the recipe as originally written:

Flatbread:
Dash of sugar
1 package dry yeast (about 2¼ teaspoons)
¾ cup plus 3 tablespoons warm water (100 to 110 degrees), divided
2 cups plus 3 tablespoons bread flour, divided (about 10 2/3 ounces)
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
½ teaspoon salt

Toppings:
2½ teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
4 cups thinly sliced spring onions (about 2½ pounds)
¼ teaspoon salt
3 cups (1-inch pieces) asparagus (about 1 pound)
¾ cup (3 ounces) shredded Fontina cheese

1. To make flatbread, dissolve sugar and yeast in ¼ cup water in a large bowl, and let stand 5 minutes. Add ¼ cup flour (to measure flour, lightly spoon into dry measuring cup and level with a knife) to yeast mixture, stirring with a whisk. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let stand 30 minutes (mixture will be bubbly).

2. Uncover yeast mixture and add ½ cup plus 3 tablespoons water. Add 1¾ cups flour, 1 tablespoon oil, and ½ teaspoon salt, stirring until a soft dough forms. Turn out the dough onto a floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic, about 10 minutes. While kneading, add enough of the remaining 3 tablespoons of flour, 1 tablespoon at a time, to prevent dough from sticking to hands (dough should still feel sticky).

3. Place dough in a large bowl lightly coated with olive oil, turning to coat all sides of dough. Cover and let rise in a warm place (85 degrees), free from drafts, 1 hour or until doubled in size. (To check whether dough has risen enough, gently press two fingers into it. The indentation should remain.)

4. Punch dough down and divide in half. Working with one portion at a time (cover remaining dough to prevent drying), roll each portion into a 12-inch circle on a floured surface. Place 1 dough circle on a pizza peel sprinkled with 1 tablespoon cornmeal. (Note: I don’t have a pizza peel or a pizza stone, so I just put my rolled-out dough—which was more rectangular than round—on the cookie sheet I usually use for pizza.)

5. Place a pizza stone (if you have one) on the bottom rack of the oven. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

6. To prepare toppings, combine 2½ teaspoons oil and garlic in a small bowl and let stand 30 minutes. (You’ll want to do this somewhere in the middle of Step 3, while your dough is rising.)

7. Heat a small amount of olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add spring onions and ¼ teaspoon salt; cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and cook for 3 more minutes or until golden, stirring frequently. Remove from heat.

8. Cook asparagus in boiling water 2 minutes or until crisp-tender. Drain; rinse under cold water.

9. Brush dough circle with half of the garlic-oil mixture, then arrange half of the onions and half the asparagus over the dough, leaving a ½-inch border. Top with half of the shredded cheese. Slide dough onto preheated pizza stone (or if you’re just using a baking sheet, put the baking sheet on the bottom rack in the oven) and bake for 9 minutes or until lightly browned. Repeat procedure with remaining dough circle, cornmeal, garlic mixture, onions, asparagus, and cheese.

Serves: 8–12
Time: 2½ hours

Postscript: I tried it with the premade crust and it was great. Updated recipe is as follows:

3 teaspoons olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
2 cups thinly sliced spring onions or large scallions (about 1¼ pounds)
¼ teaspoon salt
1½ cups (1-inch pieces) asparagus (about ½ pound)
½ cup (1½ ounces) Fontina cheese, shredded
freshly ground black pepper to taste
pizza dough for 1 pizza (1 lb)
1 tablespoon cornmeal

1. Combine 2 teaspoons olive oil with garlic in a small bowl and let stand 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile, heat 1 teaspoon olive oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add spring onions and ¼ teaspoon salt; cover and cook for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Uncover and cook for 3 more minutes or until golden, stirring frequently. Remove from heat and set aside.

3. Preheat oven to 500 degrees.

4. Trim tough ends from asparagus and cut spears into 1-inch pieces. Cook asparagus in boiling water for 2 minutes or until crisp-tender. Drain and rinse under cold water; set aside.

5. Roll pizza dough into a circle or rectangle on a floured surface. Place dough on a baking pan sprinkled with cornmeal. Brush dough with garlic-oil mixture. Arrange onions on top, and then asparagus. Sprinkle with black pepper to taste and top with cheese. Bake on bottom rack of oven for about 9 minutes or until lightly browned.

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour

FRESH ASPARAGUS SOUP

Another random recipe from my archives, in keeping with yesterday's asparagus theme. (This is yet another of the pureed soups on which I’ve tested my fabulous new immersion blender over the past month.) It’s a good spring soup—fresh, lively, and a pretty shade of green. The yogurt adds an interesting tangy kick to the common asparagus-lemon-Parmesan combination. I like to serve garlic bread on the side for dipping, which helps temper the soup's tendency toward tartness.

1 pound trimmed and chopped fresh asparagus
¾ cup chopped onion
1¾ cups vegetable or chicken broth
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1 cup milk
½ cup plain yogurt
1 teaspoon lemon juice
¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1. Place asparagus and onion in a saucepan with ½ cup broth. Bring the broth to a boil, reduce heat, and let simmer until the vegetables are tender (don’t overcook the asparagus, though).

2. Place the vegetable mixture in a blender and puree until smooth.

3. Melt butter in the pan that was used for simmering the vegetables. Stir while sprinkling in flour, salt, and pepper. Do not let flour brown. Allow the mixture to cook only 2 minutes. Stir in the remaining 1¼ cups broth and increase the heat. Continue stirring until the mixture comes to a boil.

4. Stir the vegetable puree and milk into the saucepan. Whisk in yogurt, followed by lemon juice. Stir until heated through, then ladle into bowls. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and black pepper.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

ASPARAGUS AND BRIE FRITTATA

Another of those poor, orphaned I’ve-had-this-forever-and-don’t-know-where-it-came-from-or-why-I’ve-never-posted-it recipes. I’m always attracted to egg recipes (frittatas, stratas, quiches) because they seem so cozy and yet somehow elegant, but most of the time they end up disappointing me with blandness. I don’t think I like eggs quite as much as I’d like to. Still, this recipe gives me hope. It is indeed both cozy and elegant; it’s insanely easy to make; you can eat it for brunch or dinner. Best of all, it contains one of my favorite flavor combinations, asparagus and Brie (I’m still lamenting the demise of the Sidney’s restaurant chain in the Twin Cities, solely because it means I’ll never again get to taste its gorgeous asparagus and Brie pizza).

I like this for dinner, with a green salad and maybe some toast.


2 cups cut asparagus
4 green onions, chopped
1 tablespoon butter
6 eggs
½ teaspoon salt
pepper to taste
⅓ cup milk
½ cup Brie, cut into small pieces

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

2. In a medium skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat and sauté asparagus and onions until tender, about 4 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, whisk eggs, salt, pepper, and milk together in a large bowl. Pour into a buttered 9-inch-square baking dish and top with asparagus mixture. Bake 5–10 minutes, until somewhat set.

4. Remove from oven and top with Brie. Put back in oven to bake 5–10 minutes more, until eggs are set and cheese is melted and slightly toasted on the edges.

Serves: 4
Time: 30 minutes

ROAST CHICKEN WITH POTATOES, ASPARAGUS, AND LEMON

This is a recipe perfect for the transition from winter to spring. After I cooked it on Sunday night, while we were digging into plates piled high with lemony, juicy chicken, tender browned potatoes, and perfectly roasted asparagus, I mentioned to A that I’d found the recipe on the Martha Stewart Web site.

“God bless Martha!” he proclaimed, sucking a leg bone clean and wiping his fingers. “Winfrey and Stewart in ’08!”

I pointed out that, as a convicted felon, Martha can’t even vote, so it’s doubtful she can hold an elected office. Neither of us was sure whether this also means she isn’t eligible for an appointed position, but we tentatively settled upon naming her Secretary of State. Surely (even though it was more likely created by her minions at the magazine) Martha deserves some sort of honor for bringing us this delectable, insanely easy recipe. Seriously: toss potatoes and butter in pan and bake; add chicken and bake; add asparagus and lemon and thyme and bake; eat. That’s pretty much all there is to it. It’s the kind of thing that sounds so simple it can’t possibly taste like anything special, but not so! After dinner, while ostensibly cleaning the kitchen, I kept delaying rinsing out the roasting pan so I could dip leftover potatoes in the remaining pan juices.


1½ pounds small new potatoes, halved
3 tablespoons butter
salt and pepper
1 whole cut-up chicken (about 3 pounds)
1 pound asparagus
1 lemon, cut into 8 wedges
6 sprigs fresh thyme

1. Preheat oven to 475 degrees.

2. Place potatoes and 1½ tablespoons butter in a large, shallow roasting pan; season with salt and pepper. Roast, tossing once, until potatoes are golden, 20–25 minutes.

3. Place chicken, skin side up, on top of potatoes and season with salt and pepper. Roast until chicken begins to brown about 20–25 minutes.

4. Scatter asparagus, lemon, and thyme around chicken. Cut remaining 1½ tablespoons butter into small pieces and sprinkle on top. Roast until asparagus is tender and chicken is opaque throughout (and nicely browned), 5–15 minutes. Serve chicken and vegetables drizzled with pan juices.

Serves: 4
Time: 1 hour 15 minutes

LEMON RISOTTO WITH ASPARAGUS AND PEAS

May 2008 note: This photo shows an all-asparagus, no-pea version. I had a whole bunch of fresh asparagus this time, so I used it all--probably about 2 cups.

A has always claimed, with a little shudder, that he doesn’t like risotto. While I’ve never been a voracious risotto eater (given the choice between rice and noodles, I’ll choose noodles every time), I do have a few recipes in my vault. I like the creaminess of risotto, and its versatility—like pasta, you can dress it up with every vegetable and herb and meat and flavoring under the sun. Ever since I moved in with A, I’ve been reduced to making risotto only when he leaves town. This one I found last summer in an old issue of Martha Stewart Living that had been jettisoned in the office lunchroom. It looked so springy, velvety-white flecked with green and yellow, I couldn’t resist tearing it out and making it while A was in Indiana over the Fourth of July. It was good, but ever since then it’s been back in the vault.

Now spring is springing and I’m buying asparagus at the farmers’ market every single week and eating it every which way I can, and with a craving for lemony, cheesy, asparagus risotto, I announced to A that I’d be making it for dinner whether he liked it or not. I bet him he would like it, and I was right. When we finished eating, he pushed back his plate with a bemused expression on his face and admitted, “Maybe I’ve never had risotto before. Maybe when I said I didn’t like it, I was thinking of something different.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or sock him in the arm. All this time I’ve been avoiding making risotto for no reason? Ha! Henceforth, let the floodgates of risotto recipes be opened!

Making risotto is hard for me, because it requires a lot of patience. Often I’ve followed a recipe to the letter and then bitten into underdone rice. Those recipes were probably flawed, but I should have used my powers of sensory observation while I was cooking instead of just blindly, impatiently following the directions. After much trial and error, I can finally recognize the texture of properly done risotto, and I know it always takes longer than I think it will. I like this recipe because it calls for a generous amount of broth. I think my cooking time far exceeded Martha’s oddly precise estimates (I love the part that says, “It should take about 13 minutes”), but the quantity of broth was right on, and having to wait for all 6 cups of it to be absorbed helped me slow down and give the rice the time it needed. I was a bit handicapped by the fact that I was practically cooking in the dark—the light bulb above the stove had chosen that day to burn out, and of course we had no spares on hand—but the risotto turned out perfectly, maybe the best version I’ve made.

No edits to the recipe, except that I only used ½ cup of peas. A hates them, so my neat solution was to cook the risotto without them, dish up half of it into his bowl and a storage container, and then add the peas (thawed in the microwave) to the remaining two servings for me. I probably used more than 6 asparagus spears—just however many were in the bunch I got at the market. Of course, I used homemade stock, which I strongly recommend for a recipe that draws so much of its flavor from the broth.

6 cups homemade or low-sodium store-bought chicken stock
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 cup Arborio rice
½ cup dry white wine
6 thin asparagus spears, trimmed and cut into 1-inch lengths
1 cup thawed frozen peas
1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
½ cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for serving
salt and freshly ground pepper

1. Bring stock to a boil in a medium saucepan; turn off heat.

2. Melt 2 tablespoons butter over medium heat in another medium saucepan. Add onion; cook, stirring constantly, until translucent, 6–7 minutes. Add rice; cook, stirring constantly, until edges of grains are translucent, 2–3 minutes. Raise heat to medium-high. Add wine; cook, stirring constantly, until wine has completely evaporated.

3. Add ½ cup stock; cook, stirring constantly, until stock has been completely absorbed and a wooden spoon drawn through rice leaves a trail in its wake. Continue adding about 4 more cups stock, ½ cup at a time, waiting for each addition to be absorbed before adding the next. (It should take about 13 minutes.)

4. Stir in the asparagus. Add ½ to 1 cup more stock, in the same manner as described above. About 1 minute before risotto is done, stir in the peas. Risotto is done when liquid looks creamy and grains are cooked but still slightly firm in the centers. (The total cooking time will be 16–20 minutes.)

5. Remove from heat; stir in ½ cup stock. (You may have stock left over.) Stir in zest, juice, remaining 2 tablespoons butter, parsley, and cheese. Season with salt and pepper, and serve with more cheese.

Serves: 4
Time: 45 minutes