Put a Spring {Vegetable) in Your Step

I’m ready for a menu shift. My appetite is changing. It’s the time of year when spring showers encourage the blooming daffodils and crocus. On the farm, I could smell spring coming through the thawing frosted ground. It’s the time of year when our mammal bodies are ready to shrug off the hibernation-heavy foods and take advantage of the new growth. That means swooping down on your favorite farmers market for some fresh peas, asparagus, radishes, and rhubarb. I’ve also received e-mails from mail-order sites offering fresh fiddleheads, spring onions, and trumpet, morel, and Hen of the Woods mushrooms.

I’m shifting from stews and roasts to vegetable soups, salads, and sautés, more stir-fry and sheet pan dinners, and new ideas for these spring dishes. This week, I made farro salad with radishes, snap peas, olives, and shaved parmesan cheese (pictured above). It was a great change – light and crunchy with a tart lemon vinaigrette.

Radish, rhubarb, and ramps

How about experimenting with different ways to incorporate cooked radishes or rhubarb into your menus? Besides thinly slicing them for salads, radishes can be butter-stewed, roasted, or included in stir-fry. And rhubarb is not just for dessert pies or crumbles. How about rhubarb sangria or pickled rhubarb salsa? I’m especially intrigued by this recipe for salmon with a rhubarb marmalade.

Now is the time of year to keep your eye out for ramps, morels, and fiddleheads at your local farmer’s market. They’re great for sautéing or tossing onto a pizza or frittata. Sautéed, they’re excellent in a pasta dish or carbonara sauce.

Pasta, pesto, and peas

And let’s not forget the spring vegetables that you’re used to finding (or growing): asparagus, peas, spinach, and spring greens. It’s easy enough to include them in fried rice, sir fry, frittata, or pasta salads, or to cook up a spring vegetable stew or soup. Imagine a spring vegetable pesto over spaghetti or angel-hair pasta.

Here’s a baked spaetzle with green pea pesto. This celery, radish, and olive salad is a go-to at our house and is especially good as an accompaniment to chowder. How about this Catalan approach to an asparagus vinaigrette salad? I especially enjoy Catalan food; here’s grilled calcots (Spanish spring onions) and asparagus with Romesco sauce. And here’s a Provencal approach that includes not just asparagus and peas, but also baby carrots, spring onions, and baby fennel.

My stomach feels better already. I’m looking forward to what I can manage to create over the next few weeks. What about you? Do you have any new ideas for spring vegetables?

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