Three Things
Five springy recipes, a hot take on butter, and my April reading round-up
Greetings eaters and readers! So many things to tell you about today. To begin with: I hope you had a nice weekend — it was my birthday (and my twin brother’s) and we celebrated with a memorable Oaxacan dinner at Tobalá in the Bronx. The food was so good and the space so bright and airy, I’m not kidding, I started planning my return after one bite of their enmoladas. (I think it had something to do with the stunning black mole, two-weeks-in-the-making, blanketing the dish, and also that I was celebrating with my family — and mom, above.) On the home front, we had a bagels-and-lox picnic and walk in Central Park, Andy cooked up a smashed cucumber and “shaking” chicken feast from Andrea Nguyen’s always reliable Vietnamese Any Day, and my friend Jeni absolutely nailed the birthday cake: Samantha Seneviratne’s olive oil cake, which I would now like to request for every birthday for all eternity, thank you, next. Herewith, Three Things I’d like you to know about this week…
1. Spring's Holy Trinity: Ramps, Favas, Asparagus
My farmer’s market has finally started popping with peppery greens, fava beans, ramps, asparagus, and cherry blossom branches, and walking through it on Sunday, I felt the way I imagine baseball fans feel on Opening Day. As in, Wow is it good to be here today, and also: I can’t believe I have six or seven more months of this. So what do we do with all this bounty? The very definition of A Nice Problem. Here are five options for our spring MVPs: ramps, favas, and asparagus.
1) Pan-fried Pizza with Herby Cream and Ramps I learned from Alexandra Stafford, who wrote Pizza Night, that if you must use store-bought dough (as I did here) just let it proof on the counter at room temperature for as long as you have. It helps make the dough both more malleable and more flavorful. Serves 2-3
2) Asparagus Salad with Pesto and Pickled Shallots: Cook trimmed asparagus stalks in boiling water for four minutes exactly, then plunge into an ice bath to stop the cooking. Place on a platter and distribute a few spoonfuls of store-bought basil pesto on top along with pickled onions (or shallots, same recipe) and a drizzle of good olive oil, like Graza.
3) Bucatini with Pea Pesto and Shaved Asparagus I’ve made this fresh, springy dish twice since Susan Spungen told us about it.
4) Fava-Festooned Salads When I add cooked fava beans to simple dishes, like a chicory salad (left) or a warm white asparagus salad with a Lemon-Dijon vinaigrette, it feels like I’ve added some kind of magical springtime glitter. Fava beans can be a headache to prep, but boy do they upgrade everything around them. If you have the time and energy, a straight fava bean salad tossed with pecorino, good olive oil, salt and pepper might be this season’s greatest gift.
5) Chilled Asparagus Soup with Croutons and Chives It’s like an asparagus gazpacho, and most delicious when you pile on the fixins, like croutons and sprouts. Page 74 of The Weekday Vegetarians.
2. In the Department of ‘Shook’
On the Milk Street Radio podcast last week, Christopher Kimball, in his typical opinionated style, said “There is absolutely no reason in the world to use or buy unsalted butter, because unsalted butter on toast is horrendous, unsalted butter in baking is not as good as salted butter, and by the way, a stick of butter only has about a quarter teaspoon of salt in it which actually is not quite a lot.” Only a quarter teaspoon! I had no idea.
3. The Lightning-Round Book Report
Liana Finck has a new graphic memoir out called How to Baby and if you are familiar with Finck’s cartoons from The New Yorker or her instagram, you know how well-suited her observational gifts are to a topic like new motherhood. (Mother’s Day Gift Alert!) As the subtitle promises, it’s a “no-advice-given” guide, just a personal journal where she captures both the beauty and the absurdity (so much absurdity!) of the early years of parenthood. 📚 I also just finished The Road From Belhaven, by Margot Livesey, a 19th-century coming-of-age story about Lizzie, a Scottish farm girl with an eerie superpower: She can see snapshots of the future. Instead of a gift, this turns out to be something of a curse, as Lizzie learns that knowing about the future doesn’t necessarily mean she can change how it unfolds. I know what this sounds like, but the book is not remotely supernatural or sci-fi — a genre I don’t generally love — it reminded me of both the Little House series and the quietly cinematic novels of Louise Kennedy, like Trespasses. (And if you liked Livesey’s The Boy in the Field, you’ll definitely like Belhaven.) 📚 Lastly, there’s Long Island Compromise, by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, an epic Philip-Roth-esque family saga about unresolved trauma, which I know I’ve already hyped in this newsletter, but now that I’ve actually read it, I can officially say that it’s going to be one of the big books of summer. It’s not being published until July, but you can pre-order today. 📚 On my nightstand: I joined a new book club (devoted to children’s and YA literature) that has been meeting for over a decade, and when I asked what their favorite pick of all time was, they unanimously shouted The Greengage Summer, by Rumer Godden. We’ll see!
Have a great week,
Jenny
Disagree about the salted butter... I love un-salted butter because then I can put a few flakes of Maldon on top the way I want to season it. Also, you don't want salted butter in baking as it will alter how much salt you need to add to the recipe. Salt on salt is too much salt. I've tried enjoying Beurre de Baratte or another fancy salted butter just for baguettes, etc, and I find the flavor TOO salty to bear. Also, Gilt Edge Creamery's butters have been in San Francisco (my town) since 1908 and can still be purchased in grocery stores. Their flavors (both unsalted and salted) is rich and delightful...
Feeling vindicated that I've never bought a stick of unsalted butter in my life. Excited to hear of more YA/Junior lit from your book group! Is this the same group as Gretchen Rubin's or is Manhattan filled with groups reading middle school/YA? :)