Who eats shoots and leaves? At this time of year, it’s anyone who loves local crops.
The first spring vegetables and herbs are waving their little hands from fields and gardens, just begging to be taken into the kitchen. The shoots include the asparagus, rhubarb and fiddleheads that pushed their way through the still-chill earth in late April, while arugula, spinach, sorrel, chives and mint are among the first leaves to stretch themselves to the sun in May
With all these, and more, the air thrums with excitement as farmers markets get underway. At the Amherst Farmers’ Market — now open every Saturday until Nov. 19 — vendors have favorite seasonal crops to sell. There’s maple syrup from Justamere Tree Farm in Worthington and the first rhubarb from Sunset Farm in Amherst. You’ll also find pea shoots there — pretty and perfect for eating in salads. Other stalls flaunt bright arrays of vegetables, including baby bok choy, carrots, baby onions, micro-greens and herbs such as chives, mint, and small pots of parsley, rosemary and basil that you can snip from now, but stick outdoors so they grow more for later.
While many products at the market are tried-and-true springtime favorites, others are a little surprising. There’s parsnips for example. They are slow-growing plants that are ready to pull in October and November. From the cook’s point-of-view they are cold-weather foods, ideal in soups and stews. Yet large creamy-white parsnips are in the market in spring because any that are not picked before the snow flies, just sit there in the ground, turning their starches into sugar to protect themselves against the cold. So, when they are dug in spring they are all the more deliciously sweet and tender.
There’s a similar story about kale. Spring is the time for planting it and farmers and gardeners can harvest it from early summer onward. But people who have sheltered spots manage to preserve some of last year’s plants so as the weather warms and the days grow longer tender new leaves appear — hence their presence in the market.
Another surprising find is mushrooms. These are not the wild ones but the ones cultivated by local growers. Fungi Ally of Hadley has shiitake and lion’s mane mushrooms as well as others, and if you are intrigued about how they have produced these crops, they also sell mushroom-growing kits with instructions for how to grow your own.
Most of the many mushrooms that grow wild locally appear in autumn. Morels are the only kind that come up in spring. Expert mushroom hunters sometimes find them poking out of stone walls or growing in old orchards. But foragers hunting something edible are more likely to find fiddleheads — the shoots of the oyster fern (Matteuccia struthiopteris). They get their name because they look like the scroll of a violin.
Fiddleheads are a unique specialty of northeastern North America. In the Pioneer Valley they are traditionally served with the shad that swim up the Connecticut just as the fiddleheads are pushing up through the soil. In the Canadian Maritimes they are popular with fish and seafood. Foragers who find them on the river bank sometimes take their hoard to a local market such as Atkins Country Market in Amherst or Whole Foods in Hadley, so if you don’t want to hunt the correct species of fern, you have a chance to buy them.
They taste a bit like spinach, a bit like green beans, and a bit like asparagus. Cook them like asparagus by boiling in salted water. They take about 5 minutes to get to the crisp tender stage, and they can be served instead of, or along with, asparagus in risottos and pasta dishes.
Sorrel is another spring vegetable that often grows wild. Its leaves look a little like dock, though more slender. Like rhubarb, sorrel contains oxalic acid, which gives it a deliciously tart tang. Young leaves can be cut into ribbons and added to salad but the outer leaves of a clump of sorrel and all older leaves are too tough for this. They make a wonderful soup however, and many countries, including France, Russia and India, have traditional soups made from it.
A few leaves of sorrel can also be cooked with spinach to add an acid kick that can be mistaken for lemon. Sorrel is hardy and comes back year after year — which is why you can find it fending for itself out in the wild. Vegetable vendors in farmers markets often sell plants as well as the leaves, so it’s worth considering adding it to your yard.
Among the recipes below, there’s one for Pasta Primavera that happily hosts almost any of the green shoots and leaves now growing. There’s a recipe for sorrel soup and another that features fiddleheads and asparagus as an hors d’oeuvres. And for dessert, there’s rhubarb. It’s a shoot that becomes a stalk, so it is really a vegetable and that’s the way it’s eaten in some eastern countries. Iran, for example, has a dish of spinach cooked with a few chunks of rhubarb. But in northern climates, it’s generally treated as fruit and turned into pies and cobblers. For our ancestors it would have been a welcome herald of the fruits and berries to come. It’s certainly great paired with strawberries — the first berry of the year — but perhaps never better than in May, when like all new crops, it is a particular delight.
Primavera is Italian for springtime. It gave its name to a pasta garnished with spring vegetables — often asparagus — and herbs. In restaurants, Pasta Primavera is often just pasta with any array of vegetables, often featuring late-summer crops such as tomatoes and red peppers simply because of their dashing color. This recipe is a true spring version, with asparagus and early greens and the first herbs of the year. You could vary the vegetables with other seasonal crops such as fiddleheads, baby book choy or pea shoots.
4 tablespoons butter
2 teaspoons freshly grated lemon zest
3-4 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1½ cups heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1 pound small pasta, preferably a pretty shape, such as campanile
1 pound asparagus, tough stem ends discarded
2 large handfuls baby spinach, washed and stems trimmed
2 handfuls arugula
3-4 tender sorrel leaves, stems trimmed and cut into thin strips
2 tablespoons snipped chives
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
¾ cup freshly grated Parmigiana Regina, plus more for serving
A few extra arugula leaves or pea shoots or chopped parsley for garnish
Put a large pan with 4 quarts of water and 2 teaspoons of salt on to boil. While it heats, make the sauce. Melt the butter in a large deep sauté pan over low heat and stir the lemon zest and juice into it. Let it bubble briefly then add the cream. Increase the heat and simmer for about 3-4 minutes or until the mixture is thick and reduced. Season to taste with salt and pepper and set it on the back of the stove off the heat.
When the water boils, drop in the asparagus and let them simmer for just 2 minutes. Extract them with tongs and drop into ice water to stop the cooking. When cold, drain off the water and dry the asparagus on a clean kitchen towel. Cut them into 1-inch pieces keeping the tips separate from the stem pieces.
Return the water to boiling and add the pasta. Boil according to package directions until al dente. Usually this takes 8-10 minutes, but the exact time depends on the pasta shape and the manufacturer. Drain
During the last couple of minutes that the pasta is cooking, return the lemon-cream mixture to low heat and stir in the spinach, arugula and sorrel. When they have wilted, stir in the chives, parsley and thyme. Now add the drained pasta and asparagus stem pieces (reserve the tips). Season with salt and pepper to taste, and stir gently just to mix everything together. Finally, add the asparagus tips and the pea shoots plus ½ cup of the Parmigiano Regina. At this point you can either tip into a warmed serving dish or serve the pasta onto the plates. Scatter the rest of the Parmigiano Regina on top along with a few arugula leaves or pea shoots. Serve more Parmigiano Regina at the table for those who want extra.
The mustardy dip complements two archetypical Valley vegetables: the asparagus cultivated in the fields around the Connecticut River and the fiddleheads that grow wild on the banks. Using dry mustard powder is crucial because it thickens and stabilizes the cream as well as adding its characteristic warm zing. On the other hand you can play around with the herbs, changing from chives to parsley or dill. If you wanted to make this dip to serve with carrot and celery sticks, mint would be a good option. If you want to dip pepper strips, try basil. Or use any herb mixture that appeals to you.
About 2 cups fiddleheads
10-12 thick asparagus stems
About 1 teaspoon salt
1½ – 2 teaspoons Colman’s or other dry mustard powder
2/3 cup heavy cream
2 tablespoon finely snipped chives
Swish the fiddleheads around in a large bowl of water. Let them rest for about 5 minutes then scoop them out. You will notice lots of brownish fragments in the bowl. Discard these and the water. Trim the browned end of the stem of the fiddleheads. Have on hand a large bowl of cold water with a few ice cubes. Boil a pan of water with ½ teaspoon salt and add the fiddleheads. Cook for 3 minutes or until crisp tender. Drain — you will probably see more brown bits in the water. Dump the fiddleheads into the chilled water to stop the cooking.
Meanwhile, snap the woody ends off the asparagus. Have on hand another large bowl of cold water with a few ice cubes. Boil a shallow pan such as a frying pan or gratin dish of water with ½ teaspoon salt. Drop in the asparagus, bring back to the boil and cook for just 2 minutes or until the stems are slightly tender but not soft when pierced by a knife blade. With tongs, drop the asparagus into chilled water to stop the cooking.
When both the fiddleheads and asparagus are cold, drain off the water and pat them dry with a clean kitchen towel. Set aside while you make the dip. (If more convenient you can chill them in the fridge covered with plastic wrap, for a few hours, though for serving bring them back to room temperature.)
To make the dip, put the mustard powder into a small bowl, add a tablespoon of cream and stir to make a smooth paste. Add a little more cream if it is stiff. If you want to stoke up the heat in the dip, use an extra ½ teaspoonful of the mustard powder. Whisk the remaining cream until it has thickened and increased slightly in volume. Don’t whisk it to the very thick stage; it should remain foamy and floppy. Stir in the mustard powder. It will thicken the cream. Stir in half the chives and a pinch of salt. Put it into a dip bowl and scatter the remaining chives on top. Arrange the fiddleheads and asparagus around the bowl.
Ginger and rhubarb are happy flavor partners in this cobbler — tangy enough for a warm evening yet substantial enough for a cool one. If you don’t have candied or crystallized ginger, use an additional teaspoon of powdered ginger.
For the rhubarb mixture:
About 2 pounds (roughly 12 stalks) rhubarb
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 cup sugar, or more to taste
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons candied or crystallized ginger cut into pea-size bits
1 tablespoon cornstarch
For the crisscross cobbler
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1½ teaspoons powdered ginger
½ teaspoon powdered cinnamon
½ cup sugar
½ cup (1 stick) cold butter
1 egg, well beaten
About 1 cup milk
1-2 tablespoons pearl sugar or additional granulated sugar
To prepare the rhubarb, wash it and cut into 2-inch lengths, discarding any stringy skin as you go. Put it in a pan with ¼ cup water and the powdered ginger, sugar and butter. Cook over a low heat, stirring the ingredients together until the rhubarb softens. Add the bits of ginger. Mix the cornstarch to a paste with 1 tablespoon water and pour on some of the rhubarb juice. Stir the cornstarch mixture into the rhubarb mixture and cook until it thickens. Pour into a 7 by 10-inch baking dish (or a shallow dish of comparable capacity) and chill.
To make the cobbler, preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl or food processor, mix the flour, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and sugar. Cut the butter into about a dozen bits and rub them in (or process, adding a few bits at a time, if using a food processor.) Combine the egg with ½ cup of the milk. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour the egg-milk mix in. Stir around to form a dough, adding more milk a little at a time until you have a soft dough that is nonetheless firm enough to hold a shape.
Divide the dough into 5 or 6 pieces depending on what works for the shape of your dish. Roll each piece into a thick sausage shape and arrange in a criss-cross pattern on top of the rhubarb. Brush the topping lightly with milk, and sprinkle with either pearl sugar or granulated sugar. Bake for 20-22 minutes or until the rhubarb is bubbly and the cobbler top is golden.
In mild winters such as the last one, kale left in the ground over winter will give out new leaves in spring. This dish works just as well with leftover kale as it does with kale cooked especially for the purpose. The bracing taste of vinegar would be too boisterous for many greens, but kale stands up to it.
1 stem mint with about 12 leaves
1 teaspoon sugar
¼ cup cider vinegar or half cider vinegar and half malt vinegar
½ teaspoon salt
1 bunch kale
1 tablespoon olive oil or other vegetable oil
Tear the leaves off the mint stem, sprinkle half the sugar on them, then chop finely. Put them in a small bowl and sprinkle with the remaining half teaspoon of sugar and a quarter teaspoon of salt. Pour on the vinegar and set aside for half an hour or longer if convenient — indeed this can be made a day or two ahead if you like.
To prepare the kale, wash it and remove any tough stems. Put it in a saucepan and pour boiling water over it. Add ½ teaspoon salt and cook for 8 minutes or until tender. Drain thoroughly.
In a frying pan, heat the oil over medium heat warm the oil then stir in the kale. Cook gently, tossing it from time to time until reheated. Pour in the mint mixture and let it bubble for just about 30 seconds. Serve immediately.
Sorrel is one of the earliest crops and in this recipe it appears with the earliest of local herbs: chives. This soup can deceive people into thinking it’s made with lemons, but what they are tasting is the natural tartness of the sorrel leaves. The soup also tastes very creamy, and that’s not only because it has milk in it; it’s because it’s thickened with oats.
1 large bunch of sorrel (at least 30 medium-large leaves)
1 tablespoon butter
3-4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 tablespoon snipped chives
1 tablespoon chopped parsley
1 teaspoon fresh thyme
Salt to taste
½ cup quick-cooking rolled oats
About 12 small to medium spinach leaves or more to taste
1 cup milk
Pinch or two sugar (optional)
Wash the sorrel. Break off stems, remove any coarse central ribs and tear larger leaves into two or three pieces. In a large pan, over medium heat, melt the butter. Drop in the sorrel and stir. It will quickly collapse and form a mush. Add the stock, chives, parsley and thyme and about ½ teaspoon of salt, and bring to simmering point. Stir in the oats and continue to cook for about 5 minutes or until the oats have softened. Wash the spinach, remove coarse stems and ribs, and add to the soup. As soon as they have wilted — about one minute — remove it from the heat and pour into a food processor, in batches if necessary, and process. Alternately, you can whiz it with a stick blender or pass it through a food mill. Return it to the pan and add the milk. Taste for seasoning and add more salt if necessary and also a pinch or two of sugar if you think this would help pull the flavors together. Reheat for serving. If you like, you can tear a few extra spinach leaves into the soup and let the cook briefly until wilted. Serve in shallow soup bowls and garnish with a swirl of cream.