I didn’t mean for this to happen. I meant to make zucchini bread, though why it’s considered perfectly normal to put zucchini in bread but not in cookies is beyond me.  I’d actually already done the whole zucchini in cookies thing, with little success — those cookies turned out fluffy and cakey and sort of slimy because, duh, I put zucchini in them.

So really, I thought this time I’d just put my excess zucchini in bread, where fluffy and cakey are generally welcome.  But when I read through my zucchini bread recipe I discovered a tip for maximizing zucchini flavor while minimizing zucchini moisture and I became a teensy bit obsessed with the idea that this also might be the key to non-slimy zucchini cookies.

It is.  Well, that and I used a completely different cookie recipe as my base, one that contains both oatmeal and pecans in addition to the chocolate chips.  The resulting cookie is exactly the kind of chocolate chip cookie I like to eat — thick and dense and chewy with melty bits of chocolate, crunchy pecans, flecks of mellow oatmeal, and the delicate sweetness of shredded zucchini.   Plus, no slime.

Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Zucchini Cookies
adapted from Cook’s Illustrated’s Baking Illustrated and Carole Walter’s Great Cookies
(makes about 4½ dozen 2½” cookies)

½ lb. zucchini
¾ c.  lightly packed dark brown sugar
2½ c. old fashioned oats
2/3 c. + 2 T. sugar
1¼ c. flour
¾ t. salt
½ t. baking soda
¼ t. nutmeg
1 c. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp
1 egg
2 t. vanilla extract
2 c. chocolate chips
2 c. chopped pecans (or walnuts)

1) Preheat your oven to 375°F and lightly butter two cookie sheets.

2) Grate the zucchini using a food processor or box grater to yield 1 c. grated zucchini.   Toss the zucchini with 2 T. of sugar, transfer to the mixture to a fine-mesh strainer and set it over a bowl to drain for at least 30 minutes.  This draws moisture out of the zucchini and prevents the cookies from becoming cakey and slimy, so don’t skip this step.

3) Meanwhile, place the brown sugar, 2/3 c. sugar and ½ c. oatmeal in the bowl of a food processor and process for 2 -3 minutes until the oatmeal is finely ground.  (you could also do this in a blender)

4) In a medium bowl, whisk together the remaining dry ingredients and set aside.

5) In the bowl of your food processor (or of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment), process or mix the butter until it’s light and fluffy.  Add the oatmeal-sugar mixture in three stages, mixing well after each addition.  Add the egg and vanilla and mix until well incorporated.  Add the dry ingredients in three stages, mixing just until blended.  If you’ve done all this in the food processor, transfer the batter to a large bowl and stir in the chocolate chips and nuts, otherwise just stir the chips and nuts into your mixing bowl.

6) After the zucchini has drained, squeeze it between several layers of paper towels or cheesecloth or a dishtowel to absorb excess moisture.  You want to remove as much moisture as possible, so you’ll have to work at it a bit.  Fold the shredded zucchini into the cookie batter.

7) Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared cookie sheets, spacing them about an inch or two apart.  They’re not going to spread much so they don’t need a whole lot of room.  Bake for 18-20 minutes or until the edges begin to turn golden brown.  Remove the cookies from the oven and cool on the sheets for 2-3 minutes before removing to a cooling rack.  I think these taste best slightly warm, when the inside is still a bit melty and the outside is still a bit crisp, but they’re also quite nice completely cool and pretty tasty even when frozen.

What kind of college has no football, no fraternities or sororities, and believes that one person can change the world?  The kind of college my twelfth grade self had her little seventeen-year-old heart set on.  More specifically, Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina.  In the wave of post-SAT college literature that flooded my mailbox (I must have checked a box:  ”Would you like to receive information from every college on the planet?”), Warren Wilson stood out.   They had a farm, right there at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the green and the blue and the fog all merge into one misty cavalcade of beauty.  A farm, which presumably you could work on instead of, say, going to Biology class.

In retrospect, that’s probably what freaked my parents out.  Because no way in hell was I going to Warren Wilson College, a hippie school.  So I didn’t.  I went to a nice little state school, with no football and no fraternities or sororities.  And, incidentally, no shortage of hippies.

So it comes as little surprise to my parents that I’ve spent a portion of my summer volunteering at a farm, or that I’ve taken such pleasure in it.  My favorite farm chore — for reasons I can’t even begin to explain — turns out to be picking raspberries, though I’m also rather fond of weeding.  On my family’s most recent visit, when I returned dirty-kneed from a morning at the farm with red-stained fingers and bramble-scratched arms and a contented smile, I heard my father mutter to my mother, “Maybe we should have let her go to Warren Wilson.”  Maybe. Perhaps in some parallel universe they did, and my parallel self became exactly the sort of left-wing radical they’d always feared she would, throwing herself in front of bulldozers and chasing nuclear submarines around in a rubber dinghy with buckets of blood at the ready.  Or perhaps — as I believe was my dad’s point — she, too turned out to be a quiet sort of hippie, the kind of girl who believes you’re much more likely to save the world with raspberries than with blood.

Yes, these are the things I think about as I wend my way gingerly through the raspberry thicket, cradling soft red berries in my hands and contemplating the nature of fate.  You can see what my parents were up against.

But really, the point here is that the amount of raspberries we’ve had around our house lately is directly proportional to the pleasure I take in picking them.  Which is to say there’s been a lot of raspberries.  A particularly easy and particularly nice way to enjoy an abundance of raspberries — particularly on a hot Sunday afternoon — is with gin.  And champagne.  Need I go on?  I mean, there’s raspberries and gin and champagne.  What more do you need to know, aside from proportions?  Oh, fine.  The raspberries get muddled with a bit of sage and a splash of sweetened lemon juice to create a lovely fusion of tangy sweet earthiness which is then combined with the crispness of gin and the effervescence of champagne.  It’s wonderful.  And dangerous.  And ridiculously pink.  But mostly wonderful.

Raspberry French 75
adapted from Bridget Albert & Mary  Barranco’s Market Fresh Mixology
makes 1

2-4 fresh sage leaves (depending on the size of the leaves and how much you like sage)
5-10 fresh raspberries (same)
1 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ oz. simple syrup
1½ oz. gin
ice
splash of champagne or sparkling wine

In a mixing glass (a Mason jar works just fine) muddle sage leaves, raspberries, lemon juice, and simple syrup.  Add gin and a few ice cubes and shake well.  Add a splash of champagne and rock gently to combine.  Strain into glass to serve.

If, for some reason, you decide to serve this in a ridiculously large 16 oz. glass, you’ll have to make, like, three of these to fill one glass.  You’ll also have to cancel everything else on your schedule for the rest of the day because we’re talking three shots of gin and at least a glass of champagne.

I suspect this would also be nice with mint instead of sage, especially if you’re not into sage.

When I discovered beets in my CSA basket this week I figured I had two choices: toss them directly onto the compost heap or bake them into a cake.

I don’t like cake and I don’t like beets, so I’m not sure what made me think I would like a cake made out of beets.  Possibly it was the assurance that “even confirmed beet-bashers will love this cake” in the introduction to the recipe or the fact that my foodie friend Katie mentioned that she’d tried it and liked it, but I suspect it was the chocolate.  Of all the ingredients on this earth, chocolate seems the most likely candidate for transforming beets from a mouthful of musty dirt into something that people might actually want to eat.

People other than me, as it turns out.  Because even though the puréed beets lend the cake a decadent moistness and a market-fresh sweetness not found in ordinary cakes, chocolate beet cake is still essentially chocolate cake, and I just can’t get excited about chocolate cake.

Chris, on the other hand, likes chocolate cake an awful lot, so much so that when this particular chocolate cake refused to vacate the warmth of its pan (because I’d followed the instructions rather than my own better judgment) he suggested we simply scoop it out with a spoon.  Cooler heads — the sort more concerned with photographing a cake than with eating it — prevailed and the cake was salvaged. Sort of.  I mean, look at that thing.  It ain’t pretty.

But if we are to believe Chris — and he’s awfully reliable when it comes to things like chocolate cake — what it lacks in prettiness it more than makes up for in yumminess.  We each ate a slice for dessert the other night and I’d have to agree: it’s pretty good.  For cake.

I’m aware that that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement, so consider this:  when I left for work on Friday, work-from-home Chris was eating chocolate cake; when I returned fourteen hours later (after a day at work and a night out with the girls), less than a third of the cake remained and Chris was (ahem) eating chocolate cake. “That cake has beets in it, you know,” I revealed smugly. “No way,” scoffed Chris, taking another bite of chocolate beet cake.

And it was not until I’d shown him the recipe and he’d googled “chocolate beet cake” to confirm the existence of such an abomination that Chris believed me about the beets.  ”Why must you put vegetables where they don’t belong?” he groaned miserably.  Then he frowned at the cake, shrugged in resignation, and cut himself another slice of cake.  And not a small one, either.

Chocolate Beet Cake
from John Peterson’s Farmer John’s Cookbook:  The Real Dirt on Vegetables

3-4 medium beets
butter and flour for preparing the pan
4 oz. unsweetened chocolate, chopped
1 c. mild-flavored vegetable oil
3 eggs
1¾ c. sugar
1 T. vanilla extract
1½ c. all purpose flour
½ c. whole wheat pastry flour
2 t. baking soda
¼ t. salt
powdered sugar for dusting

1)  Scrub the beets with a vegetable brush and trim roots.  Trim stems and save greens for some other use.  (I’m not sure what other use, but I’m working on it.) Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the beets.  Boil for 20-30 minutes, or until the beets are tender and the skins slip off easily.  Let the beets cool a little, the slip the skins off under cold water and then purée the beets in a blender or food processor.  You should have about 2 cups of beet purée.

2) Preheat your oven to 375°F.  Butter and flour a Bundt pan and set it aside.  (This is where I went wrong — I followed the original instructions to coat the pan with oil (!) and did not abandon ship even when I noted that the oil was pooling in the bottom of the pan rather than coating the whole interior of the pan.  Use butter; it sticks.)

3) Fill a medium saucepan about halfway with water and bring the water to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and set a heat-proof bowl over the simmering water.  Place the chocolate and ¼ c. of the oil in the bowl and heat, stirring frequently, just until the chocolate melts.

4) Combine the eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat with an electric mixer until fluffy.  Slowly beat in the remaining oil, the chocolate mixture, beets, and vanilla.

5) In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, baking soda, and salt.  Gently stir the flour mixture into the egg and chocolate mixture until just combined.

6) Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean, about 45 minutes.  Remove the pan from the oven and cool on a wire rack for 30 minutes.  Carefully remove the cake from the pan and allow to cool completely before sprinkling with powdered sugar to serve.

One major drawback to living in a place like Northern Michigan is that there are no hushpuppies.  Oh sure, a handful of restaurants in the area claim to serve hushpuppies but, as it turns out, those things are not hushpuppies.  I’m not sure what they are, but trust me when I tell you that they’re not hushpuppies. Hushpuppies — so named for their power to quiet the barking dogs of hunters and fishermen gathered around their campfires or of Confederate soldiers hoping to prevent Union scouts from discovering their campfires or of fugitive slave hunters attempting to thwart runaway slaves’ passage along the Underground Railroad or, well, nobody really knows for sure — have long been a staple of Southern cuisine. They’re hot, delicious little morsels of fried cornmeal dough, golden-crisp on the outside and densely bready on the inside.  In the South, they’re a standard accompaniment to just about everything from barbecue sandwiches to crabcakes; in the Midwest, if you want a hushpuppy you’ll have to make it yourself.

Which is where things get tricky.  Hushpuppy recipes are about as varied as the folklore surrounding their background.  Although the dough is essentially a mixture of cornmeal, flour, milk, eggs and leavener, there are all sorts of things folks like to add to their batter:  minced onion, scallions, sugar, cayenne, corn, chile peppers, bacon, Tabasco — the possibilities, while not endless, certainly involve more math than I feel like doing at the moment.  And all those possibilities make it difficult to create a hushpuppy that tastes just like home, which is why my mama sometimes tucks a small bag of House Autry Hushpuppy Mix into her monthly care packages.

She doesn’t need to do that anymore.  Because several months ago I bought an amazing cookbook called Fish Without a Doubt that suggests yet another addition to the hushpuppy party:  scallops.  I adore scallops with their sweet, delicate flavor and their melt-in-your-mouth tenderness and their subtle saltwater brininess, but scallops come from far, far away and they cost an arm and a leg.  Whitefish, on the other hand, comes right out of Lake Michigan and is available — freshly caught — twice a week at the farmers market for a mere $5 a pound.  It has the same sweetness and tenderness, making it a perfect candidate for nestling inside a bit of fried dough.

And seriously, I may never make plain old hushpuppies again.  Wait, that’s crazy talk; of course I’ll make plain old hushpuppies again.  But the way the hearty cornmeal dough puffs up around the the sweet little chunks of whitefish in a sort of Southern-Midwestern fusion is really pretty fantastic.  Pretty fantastic and pretty damn tasty.  So fantastic and tasty that the next time Chris requests beer battered whitefish and hushpuppies for dinner — which shouldn’t be long now — I’ll just skip a few steps and fry the fish inside the hushpuppies.  With maybe some slaw on the side.  For nutrition or whatever.

Whitefish Hushpuppies
adapted from  Rick Moonen & Roy Finamore’s Fish Without a Doubt
(serves 4-6 as an appetizer or side)

The original recipe, as I mentioned, calls for bay scallops (the little teeny ones). You could also substitute rock (teeny) shrimp or sea scallops cut into smaller pieces.

½ c. half-and-half or whole milk
1 T. white vinegar
½ c. cornmeal
½ c. flour
1 t. baking soda
1 t. kosher salt
1½ t. sugar
white pepper
1 egg, lightly beaten
1 lb. whitefish, cut into small pieces
peanut oil for frying (peanut oil fries the cleanest and least greasy)

1) Whisk the half-and-half or milk and vinegar together in a measuring cup.  Set aside while you get everything else ready.

2) Whisk the dry ingredients together in a large bowl with a generous does of white pepper.

3) Heat at least 3 inches of oil to 375°F over medium-high heat in a wide, deep pot.  Set a rack over a baking sheet near the stove.

4) When the oil is hot, add the half-and-half or milk and the egg to the dry ingredients and stir until just combined.  Fold in the whitefish chunks.

5) Use a teaspoon to lift the whitefish chunks out one by one and drop them into the hot oil.  Don’t crowd the pot.  Turn the heat up to high and monitor the temperature.  Fry until golden, one to two minutes, rotating as they fry.  Lift the hushpuppies out with a slotted spoon and drain briefly on the rack.  Serve immediately, or hold in a warm (200°F) if you have to fry in batches.

My to-do list is kicking my ass.  And not in the normal boy, am I busy way, either; it’s kicking my ass in more of a it’s 10:00 — do you mind if we just have pickles for dinner? way.  My point here is that it’s been a busy week — the sort of week in which last week’s clean laundry languishes unfolded at the foot of the bed and dust bunnies gather in corners to plot their eventual takeover of the living room and minor concerns like eating and sleeping slip to the bottom of the priority list.  After a week like that, a girl really deserves a cocktail.  Or seven.  Preferably in a warm, sandy spot near a large body of water, but the important thing is the cocktail.

Personally, I’m partial to gin, with its cool, refreshing crispness and its evocation of those happily irreverent flappers.  More importantly, it’s possible for me to drink copious amounts of gin and still be nice to people (the same is sadly not true of bourbon). Gin is really quite lovely on a hot, sunny afternoon and, as it turns out, it blends beautifully with the tangy tartness of rhubarb.  So beautifully that you barely notice the gin and may therefore find yourself frowning into your glass and erroneously declaring to the world at large that “this could use a lil’ more gin,” in which case you’re liable to end up knee-walking drunk in the middle of the afternoon.  Which, if you’ve had a week from hell, might not be such a bad thing.

Alternatively, you could be a good girl and just drink one.  Okay, two.

Rhubarb Collins
adapted from Gourmet
(serves 12)

2 lbs. rhubarb, trimmed and cut into ½” pieces
¾ c. sugar
3 c. water
¾ c. freshly squeezed lime juice
1¾ c.  (400 ml) gin
1½ oz. Cointreau or orange liquer
1 liter club soda
lime wedges for garnish

1) Bring rhubarb, sugar, and water to a boil in a large pot.  Stir until sugar dissolves, then reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, until the rhubarb falls apart, about 15 minutes.

2) Remove from the heat and cool for about 15 minutes. Pour the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve set over a large bowl and drain for 15 minutes, then press gently on and discard solids.

3) Cool the syrup to room temperature, then pour it into 1 or 2 pitchers or jars and chill uncovered until cold, about 2 hours.  (I chilled mine in the freezer for about an hour)

4) Stir in the lime juice, gin and Cointreau.  

5) Fill glasses with ice and add the rhubarb-gin mixture, stopping about 1 inch from the rim of the glass. Top off with club soda. Run a wedge of lime around the rim of each glass, then squeeze lime into the drink.

On an unusually warm afternoon in the summer of 1980, my sister and I wandered into a little thicket of shade created by enormous ruffly leaves curving out from bright red stalks just tall enough for little girls to play beneath.  Elated at such a discovery, we raced home to collect our buckets and shovels and then, for reasons intelligible only to little girls, spent the rest of the afternoon happily digging in the cool dirt amid those leafy stalks.  I’m not sure if this memory has stuck with me for nearly thirty years because that patch of shade was such a lovely place in which to play or because of the boatload of trouble we got into when our favorite digging spot turned out to be the rhubarb patch of a neighbor lady whose Navy husband significantly outranked our father.

But stick it does.  As formative events go, (accidentally) destroying a neighbor’s rhubarb patch is hardly worth mentioning, but I think of that poor lady every time I make rhubarb pie or rhubarb compote or rhubarb barbecue sauce or rhubarb bellinis or, well, I make a lot of stuff with rhubarb.  I like to think that what I’m actually making is amends, although I recognize that that lady would probably not give a rat’s ass about my self-imposed rhubarb penance.

I doubt she’d be able to resist this cake, though, because it’s pretty dreamy. Dreamier, even, than leafy green shade on a hot summer day, which is about as dreamy as a cake can get.  It’s incredibly moist, with melty bits of rhubarb that blend beautifully into their sugary background and a judicious sweetness that respectfully balances the tartness of rhubarb  without attempting to disguise its signature tang.

So we’ve established that the cake is dreamy.  What remains a mystery is the nature of the cake:  is it a coffee cake?  A snack cake?  A dessert?  I don’t know.  I do know that Jamie Oliver, from whom I swiped the recipe, calls it a stir cake — presumably because making it is as simple as stirring.  I also know that doesn’t tell us much about when we’re supposed to eat it, so I took it upon myself to sample the cake at various points throughout the day and my research can be summarized thusly:  yes.  It is a coffee cake, a snack cake, a dessert.  Eat it whenever the hell you want.

Because did I mention it’s dreamy?

Rhubarb Stir Cake
from Jamie Oliver

This cake bakes up with a lovely thin, sugary crust that is delightful on the first day and nice on the second day but pretty sticky and not terribly pleasant by the third day.  Which is to say:  go ahead and gobble it up.

¼ c. unsalted butter, softened
1½ c. packed brown sugar
1 egg
1 T. vanilla extract
2  1/3 c. flour
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
1 c. yogurt
4 c. chopped rhubarb (about 8 stalks)
¼ c. sugar
¼ t. nutmeg
¼ t. cinnamon
powdered sugar for dusting

1) Preheat oven to 350°F.  Grease and flour a 9 x 13″ baking pan; set aside.

2) In large bowl, cream together butter and brown sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla.

3) Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in separate bowl; gradually stir in to butter mixture.  Fold in yogurt and rhubarb. The batter will seem very thick, like cookie dough.  Don’t panic.

4) Spoon batter into greased and floured baking pan and smooth with spatula.

5) Stir together sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon; sprinkle over batter.

6) Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.  Cool on rack.

7) Cut into squares and sprinkle with powdered sugar to serve.

I spent a significant portion of my life steadfastly maintaining that mushrooms were for trolls.  Most kids would have been content to simply wrinkle their noses and refuse to eat mushrooms, but I built up an elaborate justification for my distaste: namely that mushrooms are squishy and grow in wet, woodsy places.  Where trolls live.  And, what with my not being a troll and all, I couldn’t reasonably be expected to eat them.  Of course, then I became a vegetarian, so I couldn’t reasonably be expected to eat cute little animals who had lived lives of suffering and misery either.

I can be rather difficult at times, which is probably why those who knew me in my troll-food days feel particularly vindicated when I call them to enthuse about an upcoming mushroom festival or to describe the day I spent helping a farmer inoculate logs with shiitake spawn or to report that I’ve just eaten an entire morel and asparagus pizza and boy was it yummy.

Really, it was.  I’d actually never eaten a morel mushroom before I made this pizza. In fact, I don’t think I’d even heard of morels before I moved to Northern Michigan, where morel mania is so pervasive that for several weeks each Spring it is considered entirely appropriate to greet complete strangers with a cheerful, “Hey, did you get any this weekend?”  (Because the any in question is mushrooms, not sex.  Just so we’re clear.)  One guy I know got ten pounds in three hours, none of which he offered to share.  It seemed a bit rude at the time, but now that I’ve tasted the things I know he can’t reasonably be expected to part with his bounty.

Fortunately, asparagus is much easier to come by and, as the rest of the culinary world has already discovered, asparagus and morels are a match made in comestible heaven.  Both are rich and earthy, each with a distinct flavor that complements the other while evoking the newness of springtime.  The bright taste of asparagus combined with the intense meatiness of morels is nearly transcendent on its own, but add to that the sweet bite of garlic, the saltiness of parmesan, the creaminess of mozzarella and the crisp nuttiness of homemade pizza crust and, well, a girl can’t reasonably be expected not to eat the whole damn thing.

Morel & Asparagus Pizza
(serves 2)

for the dough
adapted from Smitten Kitchen 

6 T. warm water
3/4 t. active dry yeast
2 T. white wine 
1/2 t. honey
1 T. olive oil
1 t. salt
½ c. all-purpose flour
½ c. whole wheat flour
½ c. bread flour

1) Place water in small bowl and sprinkle yeast over it.  Let stand about 5 minutes, then whisk in the wine, honey, and olive oil.

2) Meanwhile, pulse salt and flours in bowl of food processor to combine.  With motor running, add liquid in steady stream and process until the dough comes together in a ball.  Process an additional 30 seconds to knead.  Brush a large bowl with olive oil and turn dough ball into bowl.  Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 2 hours, or until doubled in size.

3) Divide the dough in half and shape each half into a ball.  Freeze one ball for later use.  Place the other on a lightly floured surface and allow the other to rest for 10-15 minutes.  Use your hands or a rolling pin to stretch or roll the dough out into a thin (1/8″) disc.

for the topping

1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 T. olive oil
1 T. unsalted butter
1/2 lb. fresh morels or 2 oz. dried morels
12-15 spears asparagus
4-6 oz. fresh mozzarella
¼ c. parmesan, grated

1) If using dried mushrooms, reconstitute them by soaking them in hot water for about 2 hours.  Drain and blot dry.

2) Preheat oven to 500°F or as hot as it will go without being set to broil. Mix olive oil with minced garlic and set aside.

3) Melt the butter in a skillet over medium heat.  Once foam has subsided, add morels and sautée for 2-3 minutes.  Set aside.  

4) Rinse and trim the asparagus, then steam in a covered dish in the microwave for 2-3 minutes, or roast in a 400° oven for 10-15 minutes, or do whatever you like to do to prepare asparagus.

5) Roll out pizza dough, sprinkle baking sheet or pizza stone with cornmeal and transfer dough to prepared pan. Brush the garlic oil mixture over the pizza dough. Top with mozzarella, then scatter the morels over the cheese.  Arrange the asparagus in a pinwheel pattern over the cheese and morels, then top with grated parmesan.

6) Bake in preheated oven 8-12 minutes, or until crust is crisp and cheese is bubbly.  Cut into wedges and serve.

For months now I’ve flipped wistfully through magazine after magazine, mooning over photos of dark green stalks and oohing and ahhing at recipes as I daydream of Spring.  I’ve repeatedly paused beside the co-op’s local produce cooler, glancing from turnip to, well, turnip and heaving great put-upon sighs before wending my way listlessly among the monotonous aisles of pantry staples. I’ve attempted to cheer myself up by flirting with spinach and chard and other leafy greens as they’ve appeared, but I’ve remained inconsolable. I’ve been waiting for asparagus.

What I hadn’t counted on, despite the praise heaped upon them by every publication from Bon Appétit to National Geographic, was ramps.  Wild ramps, by virtue of their very wildness, are a hallmark of culinary hipster-dom, the food world’s equivalent of skinny jeans and high-top Chucks and loving that band long before you’d ever even heard of it.  But that’s no reason not to try them.  Ramps grow in moist, wooded areas across most of the US and parts of Canada and are easily distinguished from their lily of the valley look-alikes by their ridiculously oniony smell.  I found mine not far from the asparagus — in the produce cooler, safe and sound inside a clear plastic bag bearing a handwritten sticker that identified them as wild ramps.  I suspect this makes me a bit of a poseur, but as long as I steer clear of broken-in chinos I’ll probably be okay.

Plus, I’m a very appreciative poseur, which I think should count for something. After I’d liberated my ramps from their little plastic prison I sat for a minute or two or maybe ten and simply marveled at their existence.  I fanned them out, breathed in their pungent odiferousness, and admired the way their pretty, pink-tinged stems curved gracefully into broad green leaves.  I carefully weighed their potential as dinner against their decorative charm, savoring the visual appeal of green leaves, pink stems, and white porcelain against the dark wood of my dining room table.  I got a bit caught up in the aesthetic of it all; I might have even petted the ramps a little, just to show my gratitude. Then I chopped them up and made risotto.

Of course, the point of this whole Spring thing is asparagus, whose tender stalks have only just begun to emerge from fertile Spring soil as if in answer to months of prayer or, in my case, whining and moping and (occasionally) cussing.  And really, there’s no reason not to eat asparagus every day from now until it disappears from the local food scene for another year, so into the pan it went along with the ramps.

I’m not sure a more fitting homage to Spring exists.  The green grassiness of the asparagus, the spicy sweetness of the ramps and the creaminess of risotto mingle together to create a fresh, earthy dish that somehow manages to taste both delicate and piquant — a dish that quietly congratulates you for having endured months and months of snow and ice and turnips; a dish worth waiting for.

Also, it’s really yummy topped with seared scallops.

Ramp & Asparagus Risotto with (or without) Seared Scallops
adapted from Rick Moonen & Roy Finamore’s Fish Without a Doubt
(serves 2)

for the risotto

½ lb. asparagus
1 ice cube
2½ c. vegetable stock
10 ramps
3 T. olive oil
½ c. arborio rice
½ dry white wine (sauvignon blanc is rather nice)
1 T. unsalted butter
freshly grated parmesan cheese 
salt and pepper to taste

1) Bring a medium pot of water to a boil and salt the water very well, about 3 T. of salt for 4 quarts of water.  Trim the woody ends from the asparagus and  cut asparagus the stalks crosswise into 2-inch pieces.  Add the chopped asparagus to the boiling water, return to a boil, and blanch for 1 minute.  Drain in a colander, refresh in cold water, and drain again.  Fish the asparagus tips out and reserve.

2) Put the remaining stalks in a blender with the ice cube and blend to make a smooth puree.  Scrape the puree into a bowl and set aside.

3)  Bring the stock to a simmer and keep warm over low heat. Finely chop the ramp stems and greens, separating and reserving the greens for later.  Heat 3 T. of the olive oil in a deep skillet over medium heat.  Add the ramp stems and cook, stirring occasionally, about 3 minutes until they soften. 

4) Add the rice and stir until it’s coated – about 3 minutes.  Season with salt & pepper, then add the wine, stirring until the liquid has nearly bubbled away.  Use a ladle or measuring cup to add the warmed stock 1/2 cup at a time, stirring occasionally until most of the stock has been absorbed.  Add additional stock as each new addition is absorbed, stirring frequently but not constantly.

5) Taste the rice after about 20 minutes.  When it’s almost al dente (this could take closer to 30 minutes than 20), add the ramp greens along with the last 1/2 cup of stock.  Simmer until most of the stock has been absorbed, then stir in the asparagus puree, reserved asparagus tips, butter, and parmesan.  Let the risotto rest while you prepare the scallops, or skip them and serve the risotto straightaway.

for the scallops

½ lb. sea scallops, tough muscles removed
2 t. olive oil
kosher salt and white pepper
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme

1)  Put the scallops in a bowl.  Drizzle with 1½ t. olive oil, season with salt and white pepper, and toss with the thyme sprigs.  Cover and refrigerate for at least an hour, or as long as overnight.

2) Heat a skillet over high heat.  Add the butter and remaining oil.  When the butter stops bubbling, add the scallops and cook for about 2 minutes, until the bottoms of the scallops are caramelized.  Turn them over and cook for an additional 2 minutes, then transfer the scallops to a plate.  Garnish each bowl of risotto with 2-3 scallops.

Spring, that elusive little leafy green sprite, is taking her sweet time this year.  Oh sure, I suppose you’re already floating through your days in a pollen-induced euphoria,  adrift in a sea of daffodils and cherry blossoms and baby bunnies going hop hop hop, but here in northern Michigan it’s still colder (as my Geometry teacher liked to say) than a witch’s tit in a brass bra.  I always imagined that must be pretty damn cold — cold enough, at least, to warrant such an expression — and it seems an appropriate way to describe the sort of stubborn, lingering cold that delivers snow in April.  When the baby bunnies are supposed to be hop-hop-hopping.

I haven’t noticed any bunnies, but each time I’ve gone to the window to cuss at the snow I’ve been silenced both by its unwillingness to stick and by the cheerful sight of robins flitting from branch to branch and pecking optimistically at the newly thawed ground.  On a walk yesterday I discovered tender little shoots of green poking their way up insistently through that same ground, and communion with the trees revealed limbs teeming with softly swelling buds.  Spring is quietly transforming brown to green, sneaking up on us like a delightful surprise.

Until she arrives, I’ll console myself with these lemon lavender cookies, which themselves are a delightful little lemony surprise.  They’re crispy, delicate things, tender and toothsome with their bright tanginess tempered by the sweetness of sugar and the herbal earthniness of lavender.  They taste exactly like Spring, and are just the sort of thing you’d serve at those mythical afternoon garden parties that exist only in our imaginations or on the pages of glossy magazines.  They’re also lovely with tea.

You might leave a couple out for the Easter Bunny in the hopes that his delight at such an offering hastens the arrival of his hopping friends, or you might pile them on a pretty plate to serve your guests.  You might also do what I did:  hide a few here and there to surprise yourself with in the coming weeks as you bask in the growing warmth, rejoice in the spreading greenness, and savor the gentle approach of Spring.

Lemon Lavender Cookies
adapted from Baking Illustrated
(makes about 4 dozen)

¾ c. sugar
2 T. grated lemon zest + 2 T. juice from 1-2 lemons
2 t. dried lavender (optional, but then they’d just be lemon cookies)
1¾ c. flour
¼ t. baking powder
¼ t. salt
12 T. (1½ sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into ½” cubes
1 egg yolk
½ t. vanilla extract

1) In a food processor (Geez, there she goes with the food processor again.  Fine.  Click here for instructions on how to make the cookies by hand or with a stand mixer.), process the sugar, lemon zest and lavender until the sugar looks damp and the zest and lavender are fully incorporated, about 30 seconds.  Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt, then add to the sugar mixture; pulse to combine, about 10 1-second pulses.

2) Scatter the butter pieces over and pulse until the mixture resembles fine cornmeal, about 15 1-second pulses.  In a measuring cup, beat together the lemon juice, egg yolk and vanilla.  With the machine running, add the juice mixture in a slow stream (should take about 10 seconds) and continue processing until the dough forms into a ball, 10 to 15 seconds longer.

(Now might be a good time to mention how much I freakin’ love this cookbook.  Not only does it provide precise, easy-to-follow instructions like this, every recipe is preceded by a thorough explanation of the results the test kitchen set out to achieve and the experimentation they went through in order to get there.  It’s a great resource for people like me who want to know the why behind every step.  But back to the recipe. . .)

4) Turn the dough and any dry bits onto a clean work surface and gently gather into a ball.  Working quickly, roll the dough into a cylinder about 12″ long and 1½” in diameter.  Center the dough on a piece of parchment or plastic wrap and wrap tightly, twisting the ends together to seal.  Chill the dough until firm and cold, about 45 minutes in the freezer or 2 hours in the refrigerator.

5) Preheat the oven to 375°F.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper or spray them with nonstick cooking spray.  Seriously.  Even if you think your pans are non-stick pans, and even if you’re out of parchment paper and don’t feel like running to the store in the middle of all this.  Line the sheets with parchment paper!  Otherwise your delicate cookies will stick to the pan and crumble when you try to remove them and you will be forced to eat all the little bits to punish them for being so naughty. 

6) Remove the dough log from its wrapper and use a sharp knife to slice the dough into 3/8″ thick rounds.  Place the rounds on the prepared baking sheets, spacing them 1″ apart.  Bake until the centers of the cookies just begin to color and the edges are golden brown, about 10-12 minutes (the recipe actually says 14-16 minutes, but 10 minutes was plenty for me and my wonky oven), rotating the baking sheet halfway through the baking time.  Cool on sheets about 5 minutes, then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

I’m rather fond of putting eggs on top of things.  For a long time I merely slid them onto tried-and-true platforms like toast or hash browns, but these days I also like to scramble them into fried rice, crack them onto pizza dough, or fry them up with strips of stale tortillas and toss the whole mess with salsa and sliced avocado.  I’m not alone in this enthusiasm; Bon Appétit recently predicted that anything with an egg on top would be 2009’s dish of the year. 

Having spent the better part of my morning carefully poaching, breading, and then deep-frying an egg, I’d like to nominate this particular preparation for 2009’s egg of the year.  Or something like that.  Because a deep-fried poached egg rocks.  I mean, you probably don’t want to have one every morning unless you’re on some sort of Homer Simpsonesque weight-gain regimen, but the combination of crispy crust, tender white and soft, runny yolk is fan-freakin’-tastic.

In this case, the yolk ran out onto a bed of deliciously nutmegy creamed spinach, mixing and mingling its richness with the sweet earthiness of the spinach. The spinach itself was excellent, and not just because I’m nearly ecstatic about the reappearance of local greens.  The combination of the two was perfect for a cold, dreary, not-quite-spring morning but a fried poached egg would also be amazing atop a crisp green salad later in the season.

And don’t let anyone tell you that poaching an egg is tricky.  It’s not; it’s simply a matter of lowering the egg into very hot water and not freaking out when bits of it wisp away.  I did it fairly successfully on my very first try with the help of this handy dandy tutorial.  As for the breading and frying, fear not; once the egg is poached it’s pretty easy to handle as long as you’re careful, and you only have to drop it in a few inches of hot oil for about 15 seconds.  It takes very little time and it barely even makes a mess. Plus it is really really yummy. 

Deep-Fried Poached Egg with Creamed Spinach
adapted (as in I left out the ham) from Gourmet
(serves 1) 

for the spinach

¼ c. heavy cream
½ t. flour
1½ t. finely chopped shallot
1 t. unsalted butter
3 oz. fresh spinach, washed, drained, and chopped
pinch nutmeg
¼ t. salt
1/8 t. pepper

for the egg

2 eggs
water for poaching
1-2 t. vinegar
¼ c. bread crumbs
flour for dusting
salt and pepper
4 c. peanut oil

1) Whisk together cream and flour in a small bowl until just combined.  Set aside.

2) Heat butter in a skillet over moderately low heat.  Add shallot and cook, stirring occasionally, until shallot is softened, about 3 minutes. Add spinach, nutmeg, salt and pepper and cook, stirring constantly, until spinach is wilted, about 2 minutes. Stir cream mixture, then add to spinach and cook, stirring occasionally, until cream is slightly thickened, about 2 minutes. Remove from heat.

3) To poach the eggs, fill a wide, shallow skillet with about an inch or two of water and a splash of vinegar. Heat over medium high heat to almost a simmer. Meanwhile, crack one egg into a small bowl and refrigerate until water is heated. Stir water to create a small whirlpool, then gently lower the egg into the center of the whirlpool.  Don’t freak out if some of the egg white wisps away.  Continue poaching for 3-4 minutes, keeping water just below a simmer.  Once egg is set, gently lift it out with a slotted spoon onto paper towels to dry.  Season with salt and pepper.

4) Heat oil in saucepan to 375°F.  Crack the remaining egg into a bowl large enough to hold the poached egg.  Beat raw egg lightly.  Place bread crumbs into another bowl and season with salt and pepper.

5) Dust poached egg with flour, transfer it carefully to the egg wash bowl and turn to coat with egg, then repeat for bread crumbs.   Lower breaded poached egg into the hot oil and fry for 15-20 seconds or until golden brown.  Remove with slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

6) Reheat spinach over low heat, stirring constantly and adding more cream or water to loosen mixture if necessary, about 1 minute. Dollop creamed spinach onto a plate, then top with poached eggs.  (I also served mine with a piece of toast, which was entirely unnecessary as the egg is already, duh, breaded.)