It's so easy being green

When I saw a recipe for green minestrone recently, my first thought was "Why didn't I think of that?" Because I really hadn't, ever. And if there's anything I appreciate, it's green! I get routinely teased for green shoes, coats, toenails... but I can handle it. What good is a favorite color if you can't take a little teasing?

So I tucked away the basic idea behind the various green soups I saw online, gathered every green vegetable in the house and went to town.

Green vegetable soup 
Makes 12 cups
1 Tbsp olive oil
3 stalks of leeks, halved lengthwise and sliced thinly
6 green onions, chopped finely
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 Anaheim peppers, seeded and chopped semi-finely
3 cups kale leaves, destemmed and chopped finely
1.5 cups edamame, shelled
4 baby zucchini, halved lengthwise and sliced
1 bunch asparagus, cleaned and chopped into 1/2 inch pieces
8 cups vegetable broth
Salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan over medium heat and add the leeks, onions and garlic. Saute until tender and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the kale and edamame and broth, and bring to a simmer for 10-12 minutes, add the zucchini and asparagus and cook for 5-7 minutes more. Taste the soup for desired vegetable tenderness, and add salt and pepper to taste.

Tip: this soup is a great one to make one evening and eat the following. The flavor is, as with most soups, really better the next day.

This is a really healthy soup! Maybe a little too healthy for some of us (me)... so I trotted out a bit of ricotta and whipped up a quick batch of ricotta gnocchi to go along with the healthy goodness. Lovely. Just the right bit of cheese to counteract the rolicking good health of the soup, and fabulous flavor, to boot.

The variations on this could be somewhat endless... is it green? Toss it in! And if one wanted to make it a true minestrone, little pasta shapes could help toward that end, as well as maybe some cannellini beans...

Enjoy!

Mushroom asparagus salad; or, would you like a little salad with your cheese?

his concoction was born of that inevitable "What's in the fridge?" moment meeting the "I'm craving X" moment. This lucky day, those two statements lined up nicely. "X" = asparagus and goat cheese, and I had some arugula and languishing mushrooms... voila! Salad happiness. (As I looked at the picture above, however, it did occur to me that this salad--like so many I come up with, is really a vehicle for the cheese. I won't deny it.)

Sauteed mushroom and asparagus salad with chevre
Serves one
1 cup sliced button mushrooms
1.5 cups asparagus, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Saute the mushrooms and asparagus over medium-to-high heat until cooked through and even slightly seared.

Toss with:
2 cups washed and stemmed arugula
3 baguette slices, toasted and quartered (remember, my quick diy crouton method? It works!)

Drizzle with balsamic vinaigrette. Crumble a quarter-cup (or more, I won't judge) of chevre over the top of the salad, season with salt and pepper to taste, and...
Enjoy!

And, because this recipe is so short, some added entertaiment seems warranted. You MUST wait for the last word of the song. Please. Do it for me.

Modified chopped Cobb salad

ome days I just crave a big salad with lots of meat. And I don't mean "meat" in the animal sense, although I'm certainly not opposed to a little chicken, or a steak salad... But most of the time, I'm wanting more than just a few greens with dressing. What I'm looking for is to fill up on a big bowl of my favorite ingredients, and right now those ingredients scream SPRING! (I should say, SUMMER!, since the warmth finally arrived in all it's glory!)

Recently, my salad bowl ended up with the following:

Modified chopped Cobb salad
Serves 2 (or if you're me and you've been working in the yard all morning, just me)
1.5 cups asparagus, roasted and cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved
1 avocado, peeled and diced
2 hard boiled eggs, chopped into eighths
4 baguette slices, toasted and cut into quarters (to act as croutons, and they worked quite nicely)
1 spring onion, chopped finely
1/4 cup blue cheese
Dressing of your choice: I like a light olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette, but blue cheese or ranch would also be yummy...

I tossed all these ingredients in a large bowl and let sit for a (precious) few minutes to let the dressing soak into the baguette.

Enjoy!

If, like me, upon typing "Cobb," you wonder where that name actually came from, and should it always be capitalized...  check this out. Good to know.

Potato asparagus salad gribiche

ecently on Pinterest I saw a pinned recipe for "potato salad gribiche," which I had never heard of. The note at the bottom of the pin said that gribiche = a sauce for potato salad made from a hard-boiled egg yolk. That sounded worth checking out to me (the girl with the egg cravings that almost match the cheese cravings), and I had no reason to doubt that definition of gribiche, so I thought I'd give it a whirl.

A little research and minor digging around later, and I couldn't find a single recipe that made the potato salad dressing with a hard-boiled egg... every single one (in my initial research, I have since found a recipe that uses cooked eggs) I found called for making essentially a mayonnaise from raw egg. And apparently, I was not alone in that dilemma; many a finer cook than I has searched for said gribiche and come up empty... But somehow, that idea persisted in my brain. And so I had to try it...

The potato salad was a little twisty itself... just the way I like it. I thought the flavors would go well with an eggy dressing... and they did.

Potato-asparagus salad gribiche
serves 6 as a side
2 cups baby potatoes, halved, boiled and cooled
2 cups asparagus, cut into 1/2 inch pieces, roasted and cooled
1.5 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
6 eggs, hard boiled, yolks separated from whites and whites chopped up
1 large spring onion, diced fine

Mix all ingredients in a large bowl and set aside.

Gribiche sauce, off the cuff
6 hard-boiled eggs
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon chopped dill pickle
1 teaspoon chopped parsley
2 Tbsp. olive oil
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar

Place all ingredients in a food processor and process until smooth. Mine was still a bit thick, so I added a bit of pickle juice to thin it, and add a wee bit of zip too, though a little more vinegar would have done that trick as well.

Pour the sauce over the salad ingredients and stir until fully incorporated. Let sit at least a half hour for flavor development.

I really enjoyed the flavors of this sauce, and felt that it really worked especially well with the asparagus and potato combination. I was a bit gratified to later discover Bobby Flay feels that way as well... hence his Grilled Asparagus Gribiche. And there are other versions out there with the sauce more coarsely chopped that my whizzed up version that I might have to try as well: The Wednesday Chef has a dish, as does Serious Eats (over steak, no less).

Anyone out there ever had gribiche? Hello, recent Paris people, did you run across this eggy wonder? Do tell!

Salads of summer: Asparagus

ery few things make me as happy as basil. Except maybe asparagus. And then there are eggs... and cheese... OK, fine, so there are quite a few food items that bring a smile to my face. And happily many of them converge right about now, season-wise.

It really only gets better from here (if and when summer actually arrives)! I had my first good blueberries (not local, but not GIANT carbon footprint, more in the medium department) this week, and a pretty half-witted watermelon (what was I thinking? That was rushing it a bit, I know!). But nectarines are coming around, and strawberries are getting less white inside. All headed in the right direction.

Now come the salad days! Here are three variations on salads that have made me quite quite happy lately:

Asparagus Salad with Deconstructed Pesto
2 cups of cleaned, steamed, chopped asparagus
1 cup of basil, chopped chiffonade
1 cup of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 cup toasted pinenuts
1 garlic clove, minced
Olive oil

Mix all the ingredients together except the olive oil, then drizzle with the olive oil to taste, and toss lightly. Serve room temperature and enjoy!

Asparagus Salad with Poached Egg and Croutons
2 cups of cleaned, steamed and chopped asparagus
1 cup of basil, chopped chiffonade
1 cup of homemade croutons (storebought can work, but won't be NEARLY as yummy, unless you have access to some fresh ones from Trader Joe's, etc.)
1 poached egg
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar

Toss the asparagus, basil and croutons with olive oil and balsamic, starting lightly so as not to overdress. Plate the salad and then add the poached egg on top. A little salt and pepper and enjoy!

Cobb Salad with Asparagus
1 cup of cleaned, steamed, chopped asparagus
2 boiled eggs
1 cup sliced button mushrooms
1/2 avocado, sliced
1 tomato, chopped
Handful of salad greens
Salad dressing of your choice

Put the greens in the bottom of your salad bowl and build the salad on top of the greens. The variations are endless--you could add whatever flavors appeal to you, but I especially enjoy the asparagus on this one. I often will use a blue cheese dressing, since a traditional cobb usually has blue cheese crumbles on it, but you can steer clear of that extra fat and just enjoy a light balsamic or honey mustard vinaigrette too.

More salad days are coming! Soon the produce will be straight from the garden, but it's going to take a few weeks with some actual sunshine to get that growth... between now and then, I'm happy to rummage through the local markets and see what's available. Fresh is fabulous! What's your favorite salad combo? I love to get new ideas...

Asparagus lemon pesto pasta

nce upon a time, there was a lemon asparagus pasta recipe, and I'm pretty sure it came from epicurious. But try as I might, it would not show itself--not under "asparagus," asparagus pasta" or even "lemon asparagus pasta." Nothing. After a couple of really decent attempts to find it, I gave up and decided I could wing it on feel and taste and memory alone. And sure enough, that worked. This version is slightly different than I remember, but with asparagus, parmesan and lemon in the pot, it is pretty hard to go wrong.


Asparagus lemon pesto
Serves 2 
1 dozen asparagus spears, steamed, tips cut off
2 Tbsp. olive oil
3 Tbsp. lemon juice
1 Tbsp. grated fresh lemon peel
2 Tbsp. grated parmesan
2 Tbsp. pine nuts
3 Tbsp. chopped fresh basil
Salt and pepper to taste
Fresh parmesan to taste

Put a large pot of boiling water on for your pasta. Whatever shape you like--I generally like a long strand like linguine or spaghettini for this dish.

While your pasta is cooking, steam the asparagus in a separate pot (or in the microwave, if you like shortcuts like me!) and cut off the tips, saving them for later. Chop the spears and put the them into your food processor with the rest of the ingredients. Pulse for about 20-30 seconds, until the mixture is coarse but consistently so. You may need to stir down the sides of your food processor bowl in the middle of pulsing to achieve that.

The asparagus mixture on it's own is quite lovely. It would make a great bruschetta, or even a pizza topping (with extra cheese, of course!)... really a delectable mixture.

Once your pasta is cooked, drain it but keep some of the cooking water (a cup should do). Toss the pasta with your asparagus mixture and add in some of the pasta cooking water to wet the mixture and melt the cheese into the pasta. Add in the asparagus tips and basil, and season with salt and pepper as well as extra parmesan to taste, and serve.

I love the fresh flavor of the asparagus; it simply screams "Spring!" to me, and I welcome it gladly into the supermarket (especially when it's local and not being flown in from Chile or some such exotic locale)! Thus begins many days of cooking with asparagus, happily.

Here's our Aerogarden in full swing! I took a whack at the basil for this recipe, and now need to scare up a dill-oriented recipe or the dill might take over that side of the kitchen! It's a good problem to have.

Springtime supper

Spring has sprung, and it is well and truly asparagus season here. I just love it. For at least two months I will be eating asparagus in every form imaginable... in pasta, as soup, tempura, just roasted, steamed, you name it. Yum.

Most nights I am lazy and do it really quick style in the microwave. I wash the asparagus, snap off the bottoms, put them in a ziploc bag and microwave at 30-second intervals. Easy peasy.

OK, so if you're not a runny, or soft, egg fan, this would not be the supper for you... But I have been getting these amazing farm-fresh eggs lately and the yolks are to die for! You can see in the picture above how orange the one yolk is--just gorgeous!
Sher's asparagus and poached egg salad
2 eggs
1 cup spinach leaves
12 spears asparagus, steamed and chopped into 1-inch bites
1/4 cup parmesan, shredded
Olive oil
Poach the eggs to your desired doneness. I use these fabulous egg poaching pods that my sister in law got me a couple of years ago--you float them in boiling water and they work just great!

Place the spinach in the bottom of a bowl, put warm steamed asparagus on top. Sprinkle with parmesan and drizzle with olive oil. Gently place poached eggs on top and have at it! Truly yummy and a great celebration of spring!

Asparagus egg salad

I found this one on Serious Eats last weekend and have been dying to try it! Nothing says spring to me like asparagus! I have also been getting fresh-from-the-farm eggs recently (I am lucky and have two great local sources), and they make this recipe all that much better. I made it tonight and just had a couple bites, saving most for lunch tomorrow. It was amazing... and I think it will be even better tomorrow!

Pardon the whoo-hoo food styling above. It's packed up and ready for my brown-bag lunch tomorrow!

Asparagus Egg Salad
1 pound medium-size asparagus

6 hard-cooked eggs, coarsely chopped

2 tablespoons coarsely chopped fresh dill leaves

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

Coarse salt and black pepper

Cut the tips from the asparagus (about 1 inch long). You should have about 1 cup.

Bring a small pot of salted water to a boil. Add the asparagus tips and cook until they are just tender, 2 to 3 minutes. Drain, rinse under cold running water, and drain again. Pat the tips dry and set them aside.

Place the chopped eggs in a bowl and season them lightly with salt and pepper. Toss with the dill.

Combine the mustard and the mayo in a small bowl, and fold this mixture into the eggs. Then gently fold in the asparagus tips. Serve immediately, or cover and refrigerate for up to 4 hours before serving.

So, what I did differently: I can't bring myself to use only tips. I used up most of the asparagus stalks, so my egg to asparagus ratio was weighted more toward the asparagus end of things. Which is the way I like it! Enjoy!