Some more spring stuff

This past Saturday I went to the Greenmarket hoping to see the first true signs of Spring, green vegetables. I woke up early hoping that if there did happen to be some signs of Spring that I wouldn’t miss out.

Luckily, I was rewarded with bunches of garlicky smelling ramps, and nice plum looking green asparagus with faintly purple tops. There was also an abundance of interesting salad greens and some of the usual pears, apples, mushrooms, potatoes etc…

I wanted to make use of the new Spring produce in a Spring inspired dinner. I came up with a menu of

‘Green’ risotto with asparagus, carrots and chard stems. It gets the greenness from a puree of pea and ramp greens. I thought this was probably the best tasting dish of the night.

The next dish was a salad of red spinach, mache and amaranth with soft shell crabs, pickled ramps and blood orange. This was ok, I think I was a bit too heavy handed with the salt. I think I’d like to try to refine this a but more and perhaps give a coating to the crab, I really like the idea of cornmeal.


Then there was my take on beef with broccoli. I coated a beef tenderloin with five spice powder then browned and roasted it. I served this with pan roasted shiitake and oyster mushrooms, a broccoli ginger puree, and a chili oil that was a bit too runny for this slanted plate.


Dessert is not pictured but was a pear and ricotta tart with maple syrup and frangelico. It turned out really well.

I’m looking forward to see how I can use more green vegetables in my cooking during this incredibly green season.

Market Update

With the weather starting to get warmer, I was hoping for some green spring vegetables at the Greenmarket this weekend. Unfortunately, there were none to be had, and I was left to suffer another Spring weekend without any wild asparagus (I've been craving vegetables lately.)

However, I did receive some good news. The people at Mountain Sweetberry Farms had a very tiny bunch of ramps at their stand and told me that ramps, and perhaps some other spring bounty should be available next weekend. I smell a farm to table dinner coming...

I kept my spending at a minimum and made myself a Greenmarket breakfast:


Fried egg over german butterball potatoes, bacon, crosnes, apples, pea greens and mustard seed. Eggs and bacon were from Violet Hill Farms and potatoes, crosnes and pea greens were from Mountain Sweetberry.