Eating Dirt

Community Supported Agriculture, Farm Shares and Spring Soup

Its spring again!  The plum trees have bloomed, asparagus is in the stores, the end of the school year is fast approaching and I am officially another year older. These are the usual markers of my favorite season beginning, or as is often the case, being halfway over by the time I get around to giving it my full attention.

With all the rebirth and new beginnings that come with spring I've done a little makeover on my blog. Like a good boob job I've added more, but not so much as to shock old friends.  This year I will focus on cooking from my (or your) CSA box or farm share. In case you don't know the jargon, a farm share is the produce delivery system more and more people are using these days, where you sign up ahead of time and support (thats the S in Community Supported Agriculture) a particular farm or group of farms by subscribing for a set amount of time. Paying ahead allows farmers access to funds for growing food in advance, locks in the price of that food and insures that there will be a market for it.

So what to do with all those cabbages, dandelion greens, collards, leeks, green garlic, celery roots, pomelos, dried peaches, eggs and various other goodies we get every week?  I haven't found too many cookbooks that offer up an unending supply of new and exciting ways to make delicious meals from leaves, eggs and roots, so I'm putting together an easily searchable collection. Plus, after more than a decade of CSA membership with Eatwell Farm, my husband and I have a few tricks for feeding ourselves and our kids healthfully, deliciously, and with the smallest amount of work possible.  So here it is - Eating Dirt 2.0, a lazy parent's guide to using up the produce.

There are some new tabs across the top - now you can keep up on the latest news in food and urban ag  by following my twitter feed, search for something to do in San Francisco on the urban ag calendar, see what's in my CSA box this week ( in case you don't get your own and need to know what to buy at the store), and follow what I'm making for dinner each week.  Soon you'll be able to read reviews of cookbooks and other food writing and access past recipes by searching the printable 4x6 card recipe box.

Seasonal, local, organic and delicious. Come on and join in the fun!

And now, a recipe.  I recently purchased Heidi Swanson's Super Natural Cooking.  I love Heidi's blog, and I now I love her cookbook too.  This soup is quick, simple and delicious, especially if you use your own homemade chicken stock. I'll cover the lazy way to do that later. Maybe tomorrow. 

-- Spring Soup (adapted from Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbooks)

2 T olive oil

2 shallots, thinly sliced

1 clove green garlic, minced

3/4 cup brown basmati rice

6 cups chicken stock (of course you can substitute veggie if necessary)

1 cup sugar snap or snow peas, cut into small pieces

1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and diagonally sliced into 1 inch pieces

1/2 cup green peas

salt

pepper

Heat the olive oil over medium heat, add the shallots and sauté for a couple minutes. When the shallots are soft, add the garlic. Then add the rice and stir, cooking for a minute or two. Add the stock and bring to a boil, then cover and simmer over low heat for 35  to 45 minutes, until the rice is tender. Then, add the vegetables and simmer for just a few minutes. Add salt and pepper as needed.

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More Fava Love

This morning the kids and I harvested breakfast and dinner from our garden. Not a full meal, but at least part of it. For starters, we had a handful of home grown strawberries - a few of the tiny white alpine ones, and half a dozen nice red ones, minus a few slug bites. It turns out that a strawberry takes at least a week or so as a red berry to become fully ripe. We didn't realize this right away, and I had doubts our garden could actually produce sweet berries. But now I know, it just takes a long time for them to be ready. The red berries need to be dark red and super shiny, swollen looking, almost. Just turning red isn't enough. The little white ones are harder to gage, but the best indicator seems to be that they get larger than I expected, soft, and dry out a little, so that they are lighter in weight than their less sweet neighbors.

The white alpine plant is super productive, I'd love to find a red one. Its probably too late to plant berries for this year, but I'm plotting a spot for next year to replace my son's digging area. He'll have to move his ancient, rusty dump truck somewhere else.

We also dug up potatoes - about five and a third pounds from a three foot by four foot section of one of the raised beds. I am really cheap at heart, and would like to at least feel that I'm getting a reasonable deal on the produce we grow, and in this case I do. I paid about three dollars for seed potatoes, planted half of them back in January in this location, and then ignored them until now. I think thats a good trade - they were essentially free, since I didn't give them any water or food. Now that our dry foggy summer has arrived, I'll have to become a slave to the hose for everything else. Or maybe debug our sprinkler system, though after the humungous water bill we still haven't paid off from last year, I'd rather stick with something I can control. Maybe I'll buy one of those old school rotating sprinklers that screws onto the hose for the lawn.

The favas from our garden really surprised me last week, and this morning the kids picked more. I know that fresher produce always tastes better, but I figured that the favas growing in our yard would taste about the same as the ones we get from our CSA box. But that was way wrong. Picked just before cooking, they are like a completely different food - bright green, soft and really delicious. Our CSA favas are fine, but now I know I should eat them right away, instead of letting them languish in the fridge for a week or more while I schedule time for podding, skinning and cooking. Its much better to just bump the schedule back half an hour and do it as soon as the beans are picked.

So the favas win my Cheapest Yardfood Award. They need really, absolutely, no care (as long as it still rains occasionally), appear to have no pests, and are a thousand times more tasty than what you can buy in the store, one hundred times more than when fresh from someone else's farm. What a great deal! 

After the potatoes were dug, my daughter requested that we eat them with roast chicken for dinner. So we did. Along with some favas. The recipe I used for favas is actually for asparagus, but I threw in a bit of both. This is the third time I've made it, and it is good this way, but I think it might be better with favas alone. When they are super fresh. My good friend Shelley gave me this cookbook, Fast Fresh and Green, for my birthday, and I'm really enjoying the author's blog posts as she gardens and cooks, just like me.

When preparing this dinner, have the favas removed from their pods (they don't have to be skinned yet, but it would be easier if they were) before you start cooking. Then begin with the chicken. Once it is in the oven put on a pot of boiling water if you need to skin the favas. Prep the potatoes and get them in the oven when you flip the chicken after the first 20 minutes, then use the next 20 to prep the veggies and the last 20 to cook them. My kids love to take favas out of their pods - yours might too.

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Roat Chicken (adapted from Alice Waters' In the Green Kitchen):

One three to four pound chicken

Salt

Sprigs of thyme or other herbs

Olive Oil

Preheat the oven to 400°. Wash the chicken with water, then pat it dry with paper towels. Salt it liberally inside and outside. Put the chicken in a lightly oiled roasting pan, breast side up. Put a few sprigs of herbs in the cavity, then tie the legs together. Tuck the wingtips under the back of the neck.

Roast the chicken for 20 minutes, then turn the chicken over and roast breast side down for 20 minutes, then turn it over again so that it is breast side up and roast for 20 more minutes. To test for doneness, pierce the leg joint with a knife and make sure the juices that run out are clear, not pink. When done, remove the chicken to a platter and let it rest for ten minutes before carving.

While the chicken rests, add a little stock or water to the pan and, using a wooden spoon or spatula,  scrape the brown bits off and stir them into the liquid. Then remove the fat (you can spoon it off, but I like to pour it into a fat separator). Pour the juices over the meat after carving, right before serving.

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Favas and Asparagus with Dijon Thyme Pan Sauce (adapted from Susie Middleton's Fast, Fresh and Green):

1/4 cup chicken stock (you can always sub in water if you don't have any - and its good to freeze it in small increments, next time you have extra)

2 Tablespoons dry white wine (like sauvignon blanc)

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter

2 bunches medium asparagus or 2 cups peeled and skinned favas (you'd probably want two full plastic bags worth before podding, see below for fava prep instructions) or 1 of each

1 Tablespoon fresh thyme, with the leaves pulled off the stems (you can sub in dried if needed)

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Combine the stock and water in a measuring cup.

In a large, straight sided saute pan, heat the olive oil and butter over medium high heat. When the butter has melted and is bubbling, add the asparagus and favas and salt, toss to coat. Arrange in one layer, and cook without tossing until the undersides are browned, about four minutes.

Give the veggies a good stir, with the intent of turning them to their other sides, and let them cook over medium heat for another two minutes. Carefully pour the measuring cup of liquid over the pot, it will sputter, so be careful. Simmer for a couple minutes, until the liquid is nearly gone, then stir in the thyme and mustard and turn off the heat. Serve the veggies while warm and pour the pan juices over them.

Polenta and Blood Orange Sorbet

Polenta is a rather intensive affair, when cooked at home from dry crunchy grit. The traditional recipe calls for near continuous stirring, for half an hour to fourty-five minutes. Deborah Madison offers a more modern walk-away version, but it needs to sit in a double boiler for an hour and a half, after two separate pots of water are brought to a boil, one at a time, on top of each other, all before the grit even comes into play. At my house, a cooking time that long and with that many steps could only be accomplished with very well orchestrated planning, which is not my forte.

So I chose the stir a lot method. I figured I'd be standing right by the stove, prepping veggies for the accompanying ragu, so it wouldn't be a big deal. And it wasn't. Except that I failed to notice what else was going on in the kitchen, most notably the scissors in my daughter's hand and the hair on the floor.  

Luckily it wasn't mine. I am too old for a mullet. But on a rather perky soon to be five year old, the look can be somewhat fetching. Jon Bon Jovi did always have a sort of preschooler-esque discipline about him, and when I found her in the living room, sitting on the sofa with the orange sky gathering through the window behind her, I could see the resemblance. 

Perhaps devoting all my attention to cooking dinner under the guise of taking care of my family is a bit misguided, but the polenta was pretty good. Excellent in fact. The ragu was passable. And the blood orange sorbet? Fabulous.

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Traditional Polenta (adapted from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone):

If you're making this with the ragu, you'll want to start the pancetta step of the ragu before the polenta.

2 cups course cornmeal

1 1/2 teaspoons salt or to taste

2 to 6 Tablespoons butter

Bring six cups of water to a boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add the salt and then the cornmeal in a steady stream, stirring constantly with a whisk to avoid lumps and having the meal seize up within the first few minutes. Lower the heat and cook, stirring more or less constantly for 30 to 45 minutes. If the polenta seizes up into a hard mass, add small increments of boiling water while it cooks, to smooth it out. When done, taste for salt and then stir in butter. Serve immediately or keep it warm over boiling water (in a double boiler) until ready to serve.

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Provencal Vegetable Ragout (adapted from Cooking Fresh from the Bay Area):

1/2 pound pancetta, cut into one inch pieces

1 leek, sliced thinly into rings

1-3 sprigs thyme

1 cup chicken stock

1 quart water

8 to 10 baby carrots, scrubbed (sliced into baby sized pieces if you use larger carrots)

3 spring onions, sliced (spring onions are pretty small, about the size of a leek)

1/2 cup chanterelles or other forest mushroom (rehydrated dry ones work fine)

2 cups freshly hulled peas or shelled and peeled fava beans I'm sure frozen would be OK)

1 bunch asparagus, rinsed and trimmed

2 Tablespoons butter

Heat a small saucepan over medium heat. Add the pancetta and brown, for about 5 minutes. Add the leek and thyme and cook until the leek starts to soften. Add the chicken stock and water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to low and simmer uncovered for an hour or so.

When the pancetta is tender and there is about one cup of liquid remaining (after about an hour), remove the thyme and transfer the mixture to a saucepan large enough to hold all the vegetables. 

Bring the heat up to medium, add the carrots, onions and mushrooms to the pancetta-leek mixture. Cover and cook for about four minutes (longer if you used older carrots). Add the peas, cover again and cook for two minutes. Add the asparagus and butter and cook for four more minutes, or until the asparagus and carrots are tender. Be careful not to let the liquid evaporate completely, you may need to add a little bit of water. When the ragout is finished, there should be only a small amount of liquid coating the vegetables.

Taste and salt, if necessary. Serve over polenta.

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Blood Orange Sorbet (adapted from Chez Panisse Cooking):

This is one of my favorite recipes. Ever. I've been making it yearly since my husband and I were given a fancy juicer by one of our wedding guests. Maybe since even before that, using a hand juicer, after my parents gave us an ice cream maker. Its a little late in the season this year for blood oranges, but if you, like me, buy them and then spend weeks agonizing over the right time to make sorbet, they will keep fine in a plastic bag in the fridge. 

12 to 16 blood oranges, to yield 1 quart juice

grated peel of two of the oranges

1 cup sugar

Grate the peel of two of the oranges and set it aside. Juice the oranges and strain through a fine-mesh sieve (this is a great job for little kids, have them rub a spatula along the bottom of the sieve to help the juice drain through). Place the juice in a pan or bowl and add the sugar and the peel. Stir the mixture until the sugar is entirely dissolved (another good preschooler job). Chill the mixture in the refrigerator, then freeze in an ice cream maker. Serve the day it is made.

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More Pasta and Veg

We had a busy weekend, as usual, with one of the highlights being Urban Sprouts' Greens, Eggs & Jam brunch on Saturday. My husband, kids and I rode our bikes along Golden Gate Park's panhandle bike path over to Ida B. Wells High School in the Western Addition for the party. The greens and eggs were fabulous - lots of yummy food from NOPA, Radio Africa & Kitchen and Contigo Restaurants, and the bluegrassy band was fun. My daughter was stumped when asked to identify their instruments - "a violin and three guitars" she told me. But it was actually a fiddle, mandolin, banjo and one guitar.

The best part of the event was meeting students from San Francisco's International Studies Academy who were preparing pesto from herbs they had grown. As you may know, pesto pasta is my children's favorite meal. They watched, wide-eyed, as the industrial strength blender mixed a green paste, bright enough to rival last month's disastrous Bean Stew with Herb Pesto. But this pesto was delicious. The big kids mixed it into the most humungous bowl of pasta I've ever seen, and served it up to my little kids straight away. 

Now we have another pesto to add to our usual basil, pinenut and garlic variety. I'll just have to keep bugging Urban Sprouts' garden teacher for the recipe.

Last night for dinner we had pasta with vegetables, which is becoming standard fare at our house. Its quick and easy and uses up lots of vegetables. My husband mixed up some appeasement meatballs with the kids, and that was dinner. The meatballs weren't as popular as usual, I suspect because the onion wasn't chopped finely enough and there was insufficient salt. They ate the pasta, leaving most of the vegetables behind. 

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Meatballs (adapted from The Spatulatta Cookbook):

This one is fun to make with kids. I'm fine having them mix the meat barehanded, as long as they scrub up well before and after. If you aren't, give them some disposable gloves or plastic sandwich bags to put on their hands.

1/2 pound ground meat (pork, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, sausage, whatever)

1/2 pound of another ground meat (again, pork, beef, lamb, chicken, turkey, sausage, whatever)

1/2 cup breadcrumbs (you can make these by pulsing a couple heels of bread in the Cuisinart)

1 egg

1 small onion, very finely chopped

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt (more or less, its hard to say)

1/4 teaspoon pepper

Preheat the oven to 350˚. Put both meats and the breadcrumbs in a large bowl. Have your kid break the egg into a small bowl, remove any eggshell bits that may have gotten into it, then add it to the meat in the big bowl, along with the onion, garlic, salt and pepper. 

Use your hands to mix and mash all the meat together, making sure the salt and pepper and onions are distributed throughout. Take handfuls of the mixture and form them into ping-pong sized balls. My husband likes to use an ice cream scoop for uniformity. Place them 2" apart from each other on a cookie sheet. 

Bake until the meatballs are browned on all sides and smell really good.

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Pasta with Spring Vegetables:

You can make this with just about any pasta and any vegetables.

1 lb or so fresh fettucini

1 bunch asparagus, sliced into 1" pieces

a couple handful very young fava beans, shelled (you can eat the inner skin along with the bean when they are very young)

a couple handful very fresh shelling peas, shelled (you can sub in frozen if necessary)

2 Tablespoons olive oil

parsley, finely chopped

lemon, for squeezing

parmesan cheese, grated

Bring a large pot of salted water to boil for the pasta. Also bring a small pot with about an inch of water to boil. When the small pot boils, drop in the vegetables and let them boil for three minutes. Then dump the pot into a colander in the sink. Fill a bowl large enough to hold the vegetables with cold water and ice and dump the veggies in. This stops the cooking process quickly, to insure they don't overcook. 

Boil the pasta, reserve a 1/4 cup or so of the water and drain it in the sink, then dump it back into the pot. Add the vegetables, olive oil, salt and pepper and some of the pasta water. Stir it up and put it in a large bowl, garnish with the parsley, cheese, more pepper and a bit of lemon if you like.

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A Spring Take On Pasta Primavera

 

No eggs for egg salad today, after yesterday's debacle.  

I love fava beans.  To me, they are the harbinger of spring.  Yes, they are a pain to prepare - first you shell the beans, then you boil them really briefly, then you skin the beans - but I find it a reasonable tradeoff. Favas start showing up at the market around the same time as shelling peas, asparagus and lilacs. Lilacs are my absolute favorite, except for  Lily of the Valley, yet another springtime superstar of the garden. I would gladly trade a year's worth of chocolate to get both of those to flower every spring in my yard.

Pasta Primavera, on the other hand, I have mixed feelings for. It is one of those foods usually more fatty and salty than good, and can range anywhere from comforting to frightening, depending on who makes it for me. But this one is from Canal House Cooking again, and is both a joy to cook and to eat. Like the name implies, it actually uses young spring vegetables, not old crufters you might find at the grocery store in January.

Its ham and spaghetti appeal to kids and manly meat eaters, and the veggies aren't too hard to separate out, should someone deem them unfit for consumption. The only caveat to easy assembly are the favas and peas. I recruit my kids to help shell them. Its the one time I encourage them to shred food, so they don't mind helping out. Getting started on those early on in the day is a good idea, they can sit out on the counter just fine and will benefit from a few minutes of attention here and there.

Today was the perfect spring day - I made dinner with the kitchen doors open to the deck and wandered down to pick mint from the garden. Lots of sun, not too hot. Hopefully tomorrow I'll make it out there again to start some seedlings, but that is looking doubtful. I hope the weather holds until Thursday. 

My bad decisions of yesterday were replaced by plain old bad luck today.  We managed to make it to the Garden Railway at the Conservatory of Flowers, which was very cool - a miniature railroad featuring city landmarks all built of recycled trash - but the fog machine was broken, so the 11:15 fogging I had promised the kids didn't happen.  Instead, we identified and counted the kitchen gadgets used to build the Ferry Plaza building. Then this evening at dinner, I managed to break two corkscrews while attempting to open a bottle of riesling.  Luckily, I found my old swiss army knife while cleaning out my top dresser drawer this past weekend - and it did the job just fine. 

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Pasta Primavera (adapted from Canal House Cooking volume 3):

Extra-virgin olive oil

1 cup diced smoked ham (if you have kids who will like this part, double it)

1 cup fava beans, shelled, then dropped for 30 seconds into boiling water, then peeled. 

1 cup shelled peas

1 bunch chopped thin asparagus

1 stalk green garlic

1 pound spaghetti

1 Tablespoon tomato paste 

A few finely chopped fresh mint leaves

Grated pecorino romano cheese

For starters, you can prep the fava beans and peas in advance.  The peas just need to be shelled.  The favas need to be shelled (the easiest way is to break the end off the bean pod, squeeze out a bean, then break it again to get to the next bean, squeeze it out, and so on).  Then drop them for 30 seconds into a pot of boiling water.  Drain them and dump them into a bowl of ice water.  Then peel them (the easiest way is to pinch a bit of the skin off, then just squeeze the bean so it pops out of the pinched spot).

When its time to make dinner, bring a large pot of salted water to boil over medium heat.  The pasta takes about ten minutes to cook, so don't start it until fifteen or so minutes before you want to eat.  Instead, turn the heat down to simmer once it boils, so that your water is ready to heat up quickly when you are ready for it.  Put about two Tablespoons of olive oil in a large, low sided pot or pan over medium-low heat.  When it is hot (it will shimmer, but should not smoke) add the ham.  Stir it around for a couple minutes until it starts to brown just a little bit, then throw in the green garlic and peas.  Add about 1/2 cup of the boiling pasta water, stir it up, and let the peas simmer in it for five to ten minutes, until they seem done to you. Then add the favas and asparagus and cook it for about five minutes more.  Remove the pan from heat and don't put a lid on it.  

If you haven't already, put the pasta on to cook.  Turn the heat back up so that the water boils vigorously, then pour it in and mix it up right away, to prevent clumping.  When it is done, drain it and then put it back into the pot.  Add the tomato paste and about three more Tablespoons of olive oil and stir to coat.  Then add the vegetables and ham, along with any pan juices, to the spaghetti and stir it together.  Salt and pepper to taste. Serve into bowls, sprinkle with the fresh mint and grate some cheese over the top.

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Grilled Chicken Pita Salad

 I have to say that the Easter Bunny has a tough job - hauling all that candy around, hiding all those eggs, I'm shocked he hasn't run out of creativity and taken the holiday off yet.  But I see that Paas has taken some sort of road out because this year there were only five colors in our box.  Pink, orange, yellow, blue, green. No purple.  No turquoise, or whatever that other one usually is.  But lots of Cars stickers - and three plastic egg wraps.  I guess that is supposed to take the place of the two missing colors.

Its a good thing our bunny took the high road in terms of candy this year, and shopped at Miette, the best candy store in the country.  Walking into the Hayes Valley Miette is like going back it time, to some magical candy store I never had as a child. I love it.  

The candy store I do remember from my childhood was up at the corner of my block and the cross street that would take us to school.  It was called Prospectors because it was on Prospect street.  They stocked ice cream bars and Bottle Caps, Twinkies and Snoballs and those weird snacks with Andy Capp on the bag that only highschoolers ate.  But the best treat of all - Wacky Packs.  And how wonderful if you spent 20¢ and ended up with one of the rare ones - like Hipton Tea Bags or Kook Aid.   I always seemed to have multiple copies of Chock Full o Nuts and Bolts or one of the cigarette spoofs, which my mother would confiscate.

Anyway, all this bunny prep necessitated an easy dinner - and it was.  The kids wouldn't eat the salad, but the pitas and chicken disappeared, which is good enough for me.

Grilled Chicken Pita Salad (adapted from Sunset Magazine April 2010):

2 chicken breasts

1 bunch asparagus

handful of snap peas (if you have them in your garden)

lettuce for four (one big head or a similar sized bag of mesclun)

2-4 pitas, sliced into 8 wedges each

3 Tablespoons olive oil

juice of 1/2 lemon

salt and pepper

Cook the chicken breasts on the grill.  Because grills are so different, its hard to estimate when yours will be done.  To test for doneness, cut into the thickest part of the breast.  If it is opaque and releases only clear juices, it is done.  If you don't feel like grilling, use a grill pan on the stove or just pan fry them in a bit of olive oil over medium heat.

Wash and dry the salad.  Bring a pot of water big enough for the asparagus to fit in to boil.  Wash and trim the ends of the asparagus, wash the snap peas, pull off any leafy bits you don't want to eat.  When the water is boiling, drop the asparagus and snap peas in for a minute, then drain them into a colander in the sink.  Brush the sliced pitas with olive oil, sprinkle salt on top and toast them, either in a toaster oven or regular oven, set to 450˚ or so.  Keep a close eye on them so that they don't burn. When the chicken is done, slice it.

In a small jar, put two Tablespoons of the olive oil, all of the lemon juice and some salt and pepper. Put the lid on and shake it up. Put the salad greens in a large bowl, shake the dressing again and just before serving, pour it over the top.  Toss the salad, then divide it into bowls.  Also divide up the asparagus, peas, pitas and chicken into each bowl.  Serve right away and eat!

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Asparagus!

 

Mmm...tasty!

 What is a home without tequila?  As I found this afternoon, perfectly fine, as long as there is vodka around. The margarita recipe I posted last friday works well with either one.

Today I had the honor of meeting Novella Carpenter, author of the book Farm City about her adventures in urban agriculture in Oakland, CA.  She was great, even more Farmy than I had imagined she'd be.  As she likes to explain in her book, she is not the first to raise a garden and livestock in an inner city.  Its not that uncommon in other countries, and even some parts of the United States. Today, I'm told, Detroit has the most active urban farming community in our country.  Nonetheless, her story of breaking ground for a farm in Oakland's Ghost Town neighborhood where she raises poultry, rabbits and pigs is pretty impressive.  

As for my garden, I took the big step of planting our pre-sprouted bean seeds today.  if you remember from a day or two back, the seeds have been growing in paper towels as my efforts to settle them into the ground were thwarted by uncooperative children.  Today I finally dispensed with my need for family planting and planted them by myself.  Naturally there was much shrieking and rending of garments when my children learned the fate of their seeds, but luckily I had a few left for them to drop into holes in the ground.  And now, thank goodness, it is done.  

For the second time this month we ate an asparagus and pea salad, from Canal House Cooking's spring issue. It is so good that I plan to make it again before the season ends.  We also grilled salmon, my college pal Jenny Nelson's recipe, that Jason and I first ate years ago on the east coast in their wonderful garden. This spring pairing is great, and for the kids (there were five - my friend Shelley and her munchkins joined us for dinner) there was also a side of buttered pasta, some sort of twisty noodles they were very fond of. I had some too, really not a bad addition to the meal.

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Asparagus and Pea Salad (adapted from Canal House Cooking Volume 3):

1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

2 bunches thin asparagus,  sliced crosswise after tough bottoms have been trimmed off.

1 cup fresh peas, shelled

4 skinny spring onions, thinly sliced

1 small head butter lettuce, washed and chopped

8 pieces cooked bacon, chopped

1 handful fresh mint leaves, chopped

pepper & salt

Bring a pot of water to boil, and toss the peas in for two minutes, then the sliced asparagus.  Boil for two more minutes, then dump the pot into a colander in the sink.  Then immerse the vegetables in a big bowl of ice water to stop them from further cooking.  Put the lettuce, onions, mint and bacon in a salad bowl, then add the peas and asparagus when they are cool.

Put some water on in a kettle to boil, keeping it warm until the rest of your meal is almost ready.  At that time, heat the water back to a boil and mix 1/4 cup of hot water with the parmesan and olive oil.  Whisk it until smooth.  Add the pepper and some salt.  Pour this dressing over your salad, toss it and serve.

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Jenny Nelson's Grilled Salmon:

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 Tablespoon soy sauce

1 Tablespoon dijon mustard

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 teaspoon butter

1 teaspoon grated ginger

1 teaspoon honey

fresh wild caught salmon filet for four

Put the olive oil, soy sauce and brown sugar into a teeny-tiny pot over low heat (I use a metal measuring cup).  Bring it to a gentle simmer, then add the butter, ginger and honey. Stir it all together, then let the sauce simmer until it thickens, so that it is not terribly runny any longer. Remove it from heat.

Lay each piece of salmon skin side down on a sheet of tinfoil, and fold up the edges to make a sort of boat around the fish. This will hold the sauce in place, so the tinfoil edges should be close to the fish edge, and at least as tall.  

Heat the grill, and when it is medium heat, put each fish boat on the grill, and brush the sauce on with a pastry brush.  Try to divide it equally among the fish pieces.

Close the grill lid and wait five or ten minutes.  Then check on the fish - it will be a paler pink color and opaque looking when it is ready.  You can cut into the middle of the fish with a knife to see how its done and judge for yourself.  Bright pink is undercooked, but you don't want to cook the fish so much that even the middle is overcooked, so a completely opaque middle section is too cooked.  When the fish is ready, you should be able to scoop it off the foil, leaving the skin behind, with a spatula.

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