spring!

Step one: marinate lamb riblets and goat chops in toasted & ground cayenne, coriander, pepper, salt and cumin.


Serve greek feta and moroccan sardines while waiting.


Marinate asparagus in olive oil and diced preserved lemons.


Have harissa on hand, mix with some pomegranate molasses and garlic. Sear ribs/chops on both sides, cover and grill for twenty minutes. Mix with harissa mixture, cover.




Take a break, eat an arugula-strawberry salad by Kate.


Grill the ribs/chops a second time.


And eat — with that asparagus, marinated and grillled. This was wonderful with tzatziki and some bulgur tossed with lots of parsley and some preserved lemon.

preserving lemons

Preserved lemons are great not only for their complex flavor, but they are a great source of tang when you don't have fresh lemons on hand. And they are incredibly easy to make. And two pounds of lemons, as pictured, could easily last a year. Buy organic lemons, obviously, as you'll be eating the skin (pickling lemons takes out the bitterness of the rind but makes the flesh too salty to use). This is the first time I've added spices: a dried cayenne pepper, a few cloves, some coriander and a bay leaf.



Either slice almost in quarters (as seen above) or cut four slits into the sides the lemon. Fill the cuts with salt. Pack tightly into a jar with more salt. Top off with some juice, if needed. I squeezed two pounds into a liter jar and only needed a few tablespoons of juice. Add more juice if needed later on. Let sit a month or so, until soft. Then refrigerate.


And next spring, these will be ready for asparagus and ramps.

ramps. asparagus. grill.

A red hot grill + Ramps and asparagus =

Really quite simple, and delicious. Marinate ramps and asparagus in olive oil, preserved lemon, Korean chili flakes and lots of white wine vinegar. Heat the grill up very hot. Make a basic risotto (having stock on-hand helps — this was a very rich duck stock with salt and pepper added at the end). But both vegetables on the grill: this was the ramps are mostly cooked the the asparagus very lightly. Chop them up upon retrieval from the grill and serve on risotto.

asparagus season

The sure sign of spring out here, asparagus is finally out. And best asparagus, in my opinion and in that of many others, comes from the Pioneer Valley's rich soil. The town of Hadley is famous for its asparagus, with farms stands abound advertising asparagus as the season begins. (This actually hailed from Sunderland, a few miles north.)


This is a bunch of asparagus, marinated in olive oil, red wine vinegar, ½ a preserved lemon (diced) and some grey salt, then grilled, tossed with pasta and pine nuts, and it's done.

Last night I saw duck legs for $4.99/lb. And supposedly all-natural all-of-that. (Breasts at at least twice that, naturally.) As I've wanted to make duck for a while now (since realizing that duck, unlike chicken, has flavor), I figured I'd give it a go. I'd had confit, magret and breast before, but never a leg that wasn't confit.

I looked through recipes, most of the books I have sugesting roasting or braising, but mostly as a duck or a breast or a leg confit. I ended up marinating the legs in a Côtes du Rhone with rosemary and sage for an hour, then searing until caramelized and braising until "done." Well, had I not forgotten my research, that should take about an hour and a half. Not the forty minutes that - maybe, if that - I gave myself.

The leek-potato soup that I distractedly made earlier-and-during, as well as the earlier-and-during baguettes, were a bit sad, the former not thick enough and the latter not light enough. The soup was good, and the bread wonderful with gravy, just not my best effort. (The bread I had tried as an overnight rise, which was part of the problem. In cast iron and free-form is one thing; in a baguette form is another.)

Anyway, duck, braised, with spinach sautéed in duck fat (and fond) with a quarter preserved lemon and a reduction of the braising liquid was delicious but a bit tough. I took the second leg and roasted it, so we'll see how the twice cooked leg fairs tomorrow for lunch.

On a literary note, started a cover-to-cover read of South Wind Through the Kitchen, an Elizabeth David collection. She refused to sell garlic presses at the shop that she owned. Sigh. And, for the moment, I sell high-end culinary gadgets -- no, "tools," claims the Rösle rep., -- for a living. Some things are tools, some things are gimmicks. (Who am I to make the distinction?)

I purchased Euell Gibbons's Stalking the Wild Asparagus tonight. That and the David book (and Mann's Joseph...) at once. Gibbbons makes me wish it were fall and I had the foraging skills of a squirrel and I'd make acorns into acorn meal, and then acorn meal into acorn pancakes. I like that he admits that much of the edible flora he omits from the book as it's edibly inedible. It makes him seem a bit more reasonable.

And that makes me think of a delicious succulent green that I ate up the slopes of Mount Eisenhower with my 12th grade Biology teacher. Joseph Rodrigues, what became of you? And what was that plant?