Spring

Judging by the latest rain storms and night time cold, it's still winter, at least the Southern California version.  But a walk through our local farmers' market (the Wednesday Santa Monica and Sunday Pacific Palisades Farmers' Markets) and you'd think it was summertime.  Just about everything you could want is in the market, with the exception of fresh corn and pluots.  Tomatoes are showing up again and they're beautiful, but they're better for roasting than eating raw.

One of my favorite recipes (and one of the easiest) uses those late winter tomatoes to good advantage. Some farmers this time of year mark down their mottled and misshapen tomatoes.  Eaten raw, they aren't desirable, but roasted and used with pasta or in a sauce, they're delicious.

Summer is fast approaching and more and more fruits and vegetables are coming in season. One of my favorite spring/summer crossover vegetables is rhubarb. I love it's tart flavor and bright pink color. It complements a variety of sweet and savory dishes. But it's most commonly known as pie fruit and is more often paired with strawberries than with any other fruit or vegetable. But I like it when it plays the leading role in a dish and not the supporting one.

In the summer on those especially hot days all I crave are cooling desserts that can be simply made ahead of time and chilled. One of my favorite chilled desserts is the Italian panna cotta, which is basically jellied cream. In this dessert the panna cotta serves as a perfect base for rhubarb, prepared in two different ways. One batch is roasted with sugar and then infused with cinnamon and sparkling wine. Another batch is pickled in a honey-sweet brine with a bit of grenadine for color and star anise for a touch of spice. The sweet, tart, savory, and crisp intermingle as the two rhubarbs meet on the plate.

Sometimes it’s all about the cut. Take asparagus. Everyone loves the long, lanky, sexy look of a whole asparagus spear. (Sorry—sounds like I’m describing a brand of Gap jeans). Why would you want to wreck that by cutting it up?

Oh, yeah, there’s that awkward moment when you’re trying to cut those long spears with a fork on your dinner plate.

And the even more awkward moment when you push the woody bottom half of the spears over to the side of your plate because they’re undercooked.

Now consider this—with a few extra seconds of work upfront, you can have a beautiful, evenly cooked, easy-to-eat asparagus side dish that can take on a variety of flavors, too.

So I’m going to ignore my mother (who claims I tend to get a bit fussy about my vegetable cuts), and suggest that you try slicing your asparagus on the diagonal (sharply…at a sharp angle…on the bias…however you want to say it) for a change.

A pile of freshly cut rhubarb stalks appeared at our back door last week, courtesy of our neighbor Ralph. This is one of the strange and wonderful things about living on the Vineyard: People are in the habit of sharing…without much fuss or fanfare. Stuff just shows up, unbidden but much appreciated. In the short time we’ve been living in the farmhouse, we’ve been the grateful recipients of beach plum jelly, wild cherry jam, honey, eggs, lobsters, codfish, sweet potatoes, pickles, warm bread and kale soup, to name a few things.

I was particularly excited to see those beautiful rhubarb stalks, since I won’t be harvesting any this year from the new plant I plopped in the ground a few weeks ago at the southeast corner of the garden. As soon as I got the plant, it immediately sent up its monstrous flower stalk. The flower is fascinating, but after admiring it for a while, I lopped it off, hoping to return the plant’s energy to its stalks. Still, it’s a baby plant and I won’t be cooking from it this year.

I knew right away what I wanted to make with the rhubarb gift — a favorite Fine Cooking recipe from years ago. It’s a fabulously tender muffin from award-winning North Carolina baker Karen Barker. The tart little rhubarb bits melt into these light coffee-cake-like treats, which are topped with cinnamon sugar. The batter has sour cream, melted butter, cinnamon, and vanilla in it, and it comes together really easily.