Last weekend, I bought red garnet yams at the market and made sweet potato salad for a potluck picnic.

The purple of the skin and the bright orange of the potato made me think of India and so I added curry powder to the dressing. Here’s how I made it: … read more

The warm days and evening sunsets of June usher in the arrival of picnic season. My early picnic memories involve big metal coolers and Tupperware containers with impossible to remove lids. There were charcoal fires smoldering with smoke that burned my eyes or wood fires lit to keep mosquitoes away and, more importantly, as the source of heat for cooking anything that could be wrapped in foil or speared on a long stick. For dessert there were marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers for s’Mores, or bananas wrapped in foil and roasted. Picnics were thirsty affairs and it was a proud moment when I was deemed old enough to control the push button spout on the red and silver drink cooler. These collaborative meals had varied menus, ham or fried chicken, green salad, bean salad or Jell-O salad but it wasn’t a picnic without potato salad.

The potato salad of those early picnics was white – peeled white potatoes, diced white onions, celery and mayo. I loved it. I skipped the shriveled hotdogs blistered by the fire and the dry, overcooked hamburgers slathered with catsup. I piled potato salad into the largest section of my divided paper plate, put a small scoop of baked beans into one of the two small sections and filled the other section with bread and butter pickles. It was an extra special meal if there was bright pink, purple, orange or green Kool-Aid in one of the drink coolers.

The monochromatic potato salad, transported on ice to every picnic was the point of departure for my expedition into potato salad country. I wasn’t always a painter but color has always been important to me. When I made my first bowl of potato salad, I though of potatoes as the white canvas, the carrots, red peppers and onions and green herbs as the paints and the dressing as the glue that held it all together. Here’s how I did it: … read more

Asparagus is a low calorie, high vitamin food and the perfect vehicle for transporting buttery sauce from plate to mouth.

In 1922, Emily Post, in her book Etiquette, gave permission to eat asparagus with one’s fingers so long as one does not “… squeeze the stalks, or hold one’s hand below the end and let the juice rundown one’s arm.”  The choice is yours.

I have experimented with a variety of cooking methods since that first success and found that I prefer the flavor and texture of roasted or grilled asparagus.   Traditional hollandaise comes to mind but in celebration of spring I made an orange hollandaise that was sublime. Here’s how I did it:

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I was delighted to see the lovely green asparagus tips poking out of my CSA bag this week. A member of the lily family, and a relative of onions, leeks and garlic, these stalks were harvested just a few miles from my kitchen.

The three-year old asparagus bed will continue to produce for at least fifteen more years. The Greeks believed that asparagus had medicinal qualities and that it could cure toothaches and prevent bee stings. Each spring there are festivals in Italy to celebrate white asparagus season.

I wasn’t always so happy to see asparagus.  As a child, I was certain that the gray-green, mushy cylinders, ridiculously called spears, must have been some of the original crop cultivated 2500 years ago by the Greeks.  When I was served asparagus, I took evasive action. I buried them in mashed potatoes, masked them in gravy or hid them under a crust of bread rather than eating them. It was Euell Gibbons’ book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, that encouraged me to give asparagus a second look. I decided to buy a bundle of firm, fresh, green stalks to try to figure out why he was tramping across fields and climbing irrigation ditches to gather wild asparagus.

Although, Euell Gibbons described how to “stalk” and harvest wild asparagus, there were no recipes for cooking them. I had to turn to my two food consultants – Irma Rombauer between the covers of The Joy of Cooking and Julia Child in the Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Except for learning that when a Roman wanted something done quickly he said “Do it in less time than it takes to cook asparagus,” The Joy of Cooking asparagus section was not inspiring. On the other hand, Julia wrote about choosing, preparing and serving asparagus and included six possible sauces to serve with then.  Her directions were that asparagus should be tender, not limp and most importantly a fresh, beautiful green. I put The Joy of Cooking back on the shelf and got started. My goal was fresh, beautiful green asparagus. Here’s how I did it: … read more

This weeks bag had eggs, radishes, spicy greens, spinach, granola and asparagus.

Fresh radishes mean radish sandwiches. Here’s a link to the post.

With the vagaries of spring weather there is bad CSA news and good CSA news.  The bad – the asparagus won’t be  ready to be harvested until next week.

The good – my bag had a cheddar cheese, fiddlehead quiche along with a lovely nosegay of fresh herbs, spicy greens, eggs and lemon balm.

Carol Stedman’s quiche are delicious and she was willing to share her recipe.  Here it is: … read more