Recipes

Have some Little Nipper signature cocktails, and break lumpia together, even better.

The season for asparagus won’t last much longer out here, so consider some of these cooking methods that you haven’t tried before. Or do as the northern Europeans do to celebrate the first harbingers of spring, build a whole meal around asparagus.

These are more like suggestions and guidelines than recipes. Right now you should be finding spinach, arugula, baby lettuces, radishes, asparagus, and kale at your local farmer’s market or your own garden.

Here is Cindy Pool’s recipe for coconut cake. She got it from her sister when they were visiting her in Greece over 25 years ago.

It's ramp season. Huzzah! But don't blink, because before you know it, this wild, elusive allium will be gone.

A somewhat peculiar recipe, and the color is disconcerting. It is a vibrant Pepto-Bismol pink, but it is delicious and I make it every year to go with turkey, and later, roast beef sandwiches.

“If this combination doesn’t fire up the love engine, I don’t know what will.” Woo hoo! Just let it cool down first.

When I make granola I add almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame, and flax, all healthy . . . if a bit fattening. Try different kinds of nuts and see which you like the best. They are often more affordable bought in bulk at health food stores but be sure there is a high turnover, they can get stale quickly.

Mussels could be considered the pasta of the bivalve mollusk world. They are cheap, versatile, and easy to cook. Last night I had them in coconut broth with lemongrass and lime wedges served alongside. Tonight a friend is going to prepare them in a Thai green curry sauce. They are abundant in many parts of world and particularly revered in Belgium and France, where they are served with French fries as moules et frites.

I eat a lot more vegetables and whole grains than meat. If I were to sit down and analyze my diet, it would almost seem vegetarian. Nutrition is important to me, but I don’t obsess about foods, fats, cholesterol, mercury, carbohydrates, acai (Oprah’s miracle fruit!), corn syrup, tapeworms, sugar, blue and orange fruits, lead in my ancient crockery, or anything else that 90 percent of the people I know worry about.

What could be better than a summer meal of lobster, corn, and tomatoes? The lobster and corn merely need to be steamed and perhaps buttered generously, the tomatoes sliced and dressed. Couldn’t be simpler.

One of the things I love best about spring vegetables is how beautifully they go together. Peas and spearmint are a match made in heaven. Asparagus and morels combine a sprightly green flavor with a mild earthy one. In Provence, spring is celebrated with a fricassee of artichokes, fava beans, peas, and asparagus.

This recipe is great with roasted or grilled spring lamb. I kind of made this one up. It is best if the peas are small.

Sweet Spearmint Peas

Shared recipes. Old, old family recipes. What a treasure trove of history! I couldn’t wait to dig into them. Some had helpful notes scribbled on them. One even had “very bad recipe” scrawled on it, and yet it had been saved with the others to live on.

The name “soul food” gained popularity in the 1960s when the word "soul" became associated with all things African-American. But its origins go way back to the Antebellum period, when slaves in the South would create meals out of discarded meat parts (pig’s feet, ham hocks, tripe) and the tossed-away leafy tops of vegetables such as beets and turnips, and otherwise would rely on whatever they could catch, fish, or farm for their meals.

I got a great recipe for granola from a famous bakery in Los Angeles last year. I have fiddled with it so much, this is now my recipe. Besides, I've conveniently forgotten the name of the bakery. I even put this granola on top of salads!

Ireland is the only other country I know of that has any special food for Halloween. There’s a famous dish made with potatoes. Dawdling along through my treasured Irish cookbook by the doyenne of Irish cookery, Theodora Fitzgibbon, I came upon some recipes and lore about my favorite Irish dish: colcannon.

These savory potatoes could serve as a main course for lunch with just a small green salad to balance their richness. They’re really much too interesting to play second fiddle in a meal. Select large, blemishless Idaho baking potatoes for this dish.

Casseroles come in so many shapes and sizes and ethnic backgrounds, and with the right ingredients they are splendid for entertaining variable numbers of people and also have the virtue of staying reasonably hot on buffet tables.

Peaches are so delicate and easily bruised, it’s obvious that the beauties from California cannot possibly be tree-ripened. But they are fine for making jams, conserves, and chutneys — anything cooked.

Asparagus are the crocuses of vegetables, the very first edible herald of spring. Of course, like most exotic luxuries, asparagus can be seen in fancy food shops as early as the January white sales.

Galettes are rustic French open-topped pastries, usually made with fruits. Inspired by some reading I was doing on the food of Southwest France, where most of France's pumpkins are grown, I decided to try putting the two ideas together for something new to do with pumpkin or its many cousins (Hubbards, butternut, acorn, Turk's turban, or sweet dumpling [Delicata] squashes).

Get your little pumpkins right away because they will all be spoiled if they freeze in the field and they keep wonderful at garage temperature. A gang of them arranged on a huge white platter with sprigs of kale for garnish are almost as spectacular as the bird.

While I like all poultry headed for the smoker, gas grill, or oven to be brined at least for a few hours, for a more emphatic flavoring, a brine cum marinade works wonderfully. It's also useful when you don't want to cook your bird for a couple of days. This turkey was left in its marinade in a large covered canner (on the floor of a near-freezing garage colder than my refrigerator) for three days. Carved in thin, small slices this 15-pounder goes a long, long way for a buffet or cocktail party fare.

Turkey on the grill is perhaps my favorite route to a juicy, brown bird - it's fast too. But the stuffing must be cooked separately via oven casserole, which I always do anyway, since even a stuffed bird never has enough stuffing to satisfy my family and friends.

War news, which increasingly comes in curt briefings from the Pentagon, rivets the country's attention and also serves to distract citizens from what is either a recession or a depression depending on whose ox is being gored. Sales of yellow ribbon may be up around here but nothing much else is. And February. Can't something be done about this wretched month — like shortening it to 10 days?

This combination of fresh haricot beans and dried garbanzos (chickpeas) is beautiful, nutritious, and delicious. Even the crankiest of eaters will find nothing to object to.

“By the beginning of the 18th century . . . all the arguments which were to sustain modem vegetarianism were in circulation.” — Keith Thomas, “Man and the Natural World,” 1983

These arguments were: that slaughtering animals has a brutalizing effect on human behavior; that consuming meat is bad for the health; that it inflicts untold suffering on humans’ fellow creatures; that it is simply wrong to kill any animals at all (the dominant view of theologians from the Renaissance on was, and I believe still is, that animals were created by God for the benefit of mankind).

This amazingly tender and juicy pork roast is the result of cooking at high temperature a relatively short time in a covered Weber grill, and butterflied leg of lamb has been seen on fashionable grills for over 20 years but whole leg of lamb is far less commonplace.

Trout with bacon and vinegar sauce is a sophisticated dinner version of an old-time fisherman's breakfast, while flounder takes on an interesting flavor and appearance when stuffed with herbs.

“Man is an epicure just as he is an artist, a scholar, a poet. The palate . . . is as delicate and susceptible of training as the eye or ear, and equally deserving of respect.”  — Guy de Maupassant, Madame Husson’s Rose-king