The month of May has not been great for planned dinners in our little household. Between work commitments, appointments, preparing for our move across town, and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-us trip to Detroit for my Grandma’s 90th birthday, my attempts at shopping for and sticking to a meal plan have mostly been a big fat flop.

I’ve also had difficulty improvising, of late. I’ve been tired and finicky, and cooking down the pantry and freezer pre-move has been less than inspiring – it doesn’t help that it still feels like March outside. I’m in a bit of a rut, but restless, eager for simpler, lighter fare (and the weather to match, please).

Mike had to turn around and head down to NYC right on the heels of our Detroit trip, but he returned with some goodies from the Union Square Greenmarket that perked me right up, among them a beautiful bunch of asparagus that made its way into our dinner last night. We’ve missed the first couple weeks of the local stuff, so this was very welcome, and I wanted to treat it fairly simply.

I gave it a good rinse, snapped off the ends, and roasted the spears until they were just tender, serving them on a bed of creamy, cheesy polenta. I topped each plate off with a pastured local egg, fried in olive oil until the edges were crisp, and sprinkled with coarse grey salt and lots of freshly ground pepper. This may not have been the light spring dish I’ve been dreaming of, but it was perfect for the damp, chilly night, and it was just the kind of simple meal that always satisfies me.

Anita’s Dinner on a deadline post is still percolating in my brain, and it has been interesting to follow the responses her post has received so far. This last week has been a bit of an anomaly for us in the kitchen, with Mike fine-tuning his pizza recipes for food52′s Week 47 challenge, and me working on some cooking and recipe-testing projects of my own, but we’ve still had to get dinner on the table, and when it hasn’t been pizza or one of my works-in-progress, it has most often been something as simple as pasta. And as much as I’ve griped in the past about how I can’t bear to post another darned pasta dish, I’ve decided that I’m really okay with pasta being something we eat as often as we do, whether it makes it to the blog or not.

I am a home cook. I’m not a writer or a culinary professional, I’m just a girl who works long days, comes home exhausted, and looks forward to sharing a meal with her husband. And whether he’s cooking dinner, or I am, or it’s a joint effort, by and large I want what we eat at home to be good, honest, real food, even if it’s just a simple bowl of pasta and vegetables. I have to be okay with that, because ultimately, the point isn’t posting stuff to this blog – it’s about feeding ourselves well. Being able to do that in the time it takes to boil a pot of water and cook some orecchiette is something I shouldn’t take for granted.

Commuting to Boston for work during the week can be a challenge. It certainly makes for some very long days, but the upside is that I can take advantage of the shops and markets in not one but two cities.

I was delighted to stumble upon the Boston Public Market in Dewey Square last Thursday evening on my way to South Station, and while I didn’t bring anything home with me that day, I made plans to head over on Tuesday during my lunch break to see what good things would be available. And there were many.

Among the things I picked up: strawberries from C.N. Smith Farm for Mike’s mixological tinkering, green garlic and a bouquet of radishes from Kimball Fruit Farm, and a package of smoked pork loin chops from Spring Brook Farm.

While Mike grilled the chops and a bundle of Simmons Farm asparagus, I got some potatoes boiling indoors and prepped the ingredients for a quick sauce for the chops. We had a few fresh morels to use up, which I sauteed in butter with chopped shallot and plenty of flowering thyme. I added a splash of vermouth, some dijon mustard, and I finished the sauce with a dollop of creme fraiche just before serving. Not bad for a quick weeknight dinner.

It seems everywhere I turn on the internet these days, I see a mouthwatering recipe featuring pasta paired with the vegetable of the moment, asparagus. And frankly, the combination is so perfect for a quick meal this time of year it’s not surprising that asparagus pastas are all the rage.

My version was inspired by a dish I had recently at La Laiterie, which contained grilled asparagus and a fresh, bright spring onion soubise. The flavors were wonderful together, and while that dish partnered them with halibut cheeks, I loved the flavors of the asparagus and creamy spring onion so much that I thought I’d spin the two components into a sauce for pasta.

I started by blanching a couple of cups of spring onion, sliced into segments an inch or two long, then pureeing them in the food processor with a little bit of water. I added a dab of butter to a skillet while my pasta water bubbled away on another burner, and I gently warmed the puree in the butter. I added the juice and zest of half a fat lemon, a sprinkle of sea salt, and then melted in about half a cup of tangy crème fraiche.

I had separated my asparagus into tips and stalks, using a vegetable peeler to shave the stalks into long, thin ribbons. As the pasta boiled (I used a farro fettucine, which needed only 5-6 minutes in the pot), I cooked the asparagus just briefly in the sauce, adding a bit of starchy pasta water to smooth it all out. I transferred the pasta to the pan with the sauce, tossing it gently to coat the noodles, then spooned it into shallow bowls, finishing our plates with a grating of Pecorino Romano and more lemon zest.

The flavors worked as well together as I had hoped, with the spring onion puree, lemon and crème fraiche melding into a light but luxurious sauce, but the thing that was most fun about this for me was that with each twirl of my fork, silky ribbons of asparagus were entwined with the pasta, providing a pretty pop of color and fresh flavor in every bite.

Before we flew off to Detroit to visit my family, I was delighted to appear as a guest on WNRI’s Jen’s Dish, hosted by my friend and Farm Fresh RI’s Buy Local Coordinator, Jen Huntley-Corbin.

If you missed it, Jen was kind enough to provide me with the audio from the show, which you can download here, or listen to embedded here:

Download audio file (JensDishLND_5_6_09.mp3)

I brought along a little breakfast to start our day off right, with ingredients sourced from the Springtime Farmers’ Market: a savory bread pudding made with breads from both Olga’s and Seven Stars Bakery, Four Town Farm scallions, asparagus from Cooks Valley Farm, Zephyr Farm eggs, milk and cream from Christiansen’s Dairy (plus homemade butter made from that cream), and finally, a creamy Gouda cheese from Narragansett Creamery.

Though I don’t often post recipes here, I promised Jen I’d let her know how I made this so she can duplicate it at home. As I’ve said before, what I love about bread pudding is that it is incredibly versatile, a great way to feed a crowd or to use up heels of bread or little odds and ends you might have lingering around the fridge. You can, as I did here, assemble everything the night before and bake it in the morning just before serving, and you can even bake individual portions in a muffin tin rather than a baking dish for an easy portable breakfast. We even like it for dinner, with a salad of mixed greens and a simple vinaigrette.

Savory Bread Pudding

3 farm eggs (ours are usually in the large to extra-large size range)
3 cups whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
2-3 tablespoons good, sharp Dijon mustard
kosher salt
freshly ground pepper, if desired
4-5 cups of cubed bread (Note: I like the textural effect of leaving the crusts on, but you can certainly remove them if you like. Also, I prefer using a rustic country-style bread, but almost any bread will do – even croissants are good if that’s what you’ve got on hand. Finally, slightly stale or dry bread tends to soak up the custard better.)
2-3 cups fresh seasonal vegetables (I used about 2 cups of diced asparagus and 1 cup of thinly sliced scallions, but again, use what’s fresh and in season in your neck of the woods. If you like, a little bit of thinly sliced prosciutto, cooked crumbled bacon or sausage is good, too, as are fresh herbs.)
1-2 cups flavorful artisan cheese, shredded or crumbled (the amount will vary according to your taste and how mild or strongly flavored the cheese is)
butter for the baking dish or muffin tins

Preheat oven to 450. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs, then stir in the milk, cream, mustard, salt and pepper if using, until the mixture is well-combined. Add the bread cubes and press down so that they are completely submerged in the egg mixture (clean hands are best for this, so you can really put some muscle behind it). Let this sit for a few minutes, then toss and press again so that all of the cubes are thoroughly soaked. Add the vegetables a little at a time, stirring through so they are fairly evenly distributed.

Butter your baking dish or muffin tins. Spoon the bread mixture in until it comes about halfway up the sides, then sprinkle a layer of cheese on top. Repeat with the remaining bread and cheese, then cover tightly with foil. (If you are preparing this ahead of time, you can stop at this point and store it in the fridge until you are ready to bake it.)

Bake covered for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and bake an additional 10 minutes or so, until the top is golden and bubbly. Serve hot or at room temperature.

I’m a big fan of soup any time of year, but there’s nothing like a light, brothy bowl of springtime veggies to take the chill off an early May evening. I tossed this together mostly from odds and ends: first, a lone leek which had been lingering in the crisper drawer, then some thinly sliced fennel stalks, both cooked with a sprinkling of salt and a knob of butter until soft. Next I added some cooked flageolet beans and their cooking liquid, plus a few additional cups of water, some sweet young carrots, and a half cup or so of carnaroli rice. While the broth bubbled and the rice plumped, I thawed some leftover cooked asparagus and peas from the freezer, adding them to the pot to just warm through. I tasted the soup for seasoning and added a few finishing touches, in the form of fresh spinach, chopped fresh tarragon, and shards of Pecorino Romano. A little toasted bread on the side (with more of that Pecorino), and we were good to go.

This is a plate of creamy Anson Mills grits with Smith’s Farmstead cheddar, Simmons Farm spinach and Hopkins Farm asparagus sauteed with olive oil and shallot, topped with a sunny-side up Zephyr Farm egg – the combination of a cooked bean or grain plus veggies and egg has become my favorite formula for a quick meal, any time of day.

This meal was nothing fancy – honestly, the pasta was primarily a vehicle for another batch of bright and zingy sorrel pesto. I made the sorrel pesto without pine nuts this time, instead tossing a bunch of chopped hazelnuts into the pasta when I tossed it to provide a little crunch.

Also in the mix: thin stalks of fresh, local asparagus, which I chopped into short little bits and tossed, raw, into the hot pasta, some tiny peas from the freezer, and a light dusting of finely grated Divine Providence. This pasta was simple, satisfying, and full of the flavors of springtime.

Yesterday was so beautiful all I could think about was sitting outside, enjoying the fresh air and sunshine and marveling at how seemingly everything around us is in bloom. We had thawed a large Cornish game hen that made the trip from Brooklyn with us, and we had planned to roast it, but the weather all but demanded that we grill instead.

Mike rubbed the bird with a mixture of salt, pepper, lemon zest and olive oil and grilled it over hardwood. My contribution to the meal was a combination of barley, beluga lentils, asparagus and pea tendrils, dressed with a little good olive oil and a copious amount of fresh lemon juice – tasty, but it got a tiny bit overcooked, and I think I would have preferred the texture if I had cooked the components separately. The hen, however, was juicy and succulent, with crisp skin and a lovely light smokiness that whispered “summer’s coming.”

In the days leading up to our departure from NYC, Mike and I were keeping a very close eye on Lucy’s Greenmarket Report to monitor the anticipated arrival of asparagus at Union Square. We were hoping we could get our hands on some before the move, and one recent day we mentioned our asparagus watch on Twitter. One friend was a little confused as to why we were making such a fuss – after all, asparagus is in supermarkets year-round, isn’t it? She’s right, of course, but as Mike replied to her with a smile, “we’re snobby locavores.”

Now, I don’t know about the “snobby” part (and I’d hope we’re not actually snobs), but the whole exchange really made me realize how much our way of eating has changed over the last couple of years. Buying supermarket asparagus doesn’t even occur to me anymore, even in the dead of winter when I’m desperate for it. It just tastes better in the springtime, when it’s in season and grown close to home, and I’m happy to wait for it and then indulge until I can’t bear looking at another fat green stalk.

Though we moved away before our favorite New York area farmers brought their asparagus to market, we scored a big bag of Rhode Island asparagus at the market at AS220 on Saturday. I pulled out the thickest ones for grilling Saturday evening, figuring I’d save the rest for a meatless Monday dinner. By Monday evening, the warm, sunny weather we enjoyed all weekend had turned to wind and rain, so something rich and creamy was in order.

I chopped up my remaining asparagus spears and some fresh chanterelles (sorry, not local), and sauteed them in a bit of butter. I seasoned them with fresh thyme and gently stirred them into a pot of my basic risotto, adding about half a cup of creme fraiche and some finely grated Pecorino Romano off the heat to finish the dish.

The mushrooms were a lovely foil for the crisp-tender asparagus, and the risotto was a wonderful carrier for both. As the weather warms up and asparagus season continues, I look forward to lighter and simpler preparations, but this was a fine way to renew my acquaintance with an old friend.

(Interesting reading on local asparagus here.)