Spring

It wouldn’t be Spring in Maine without eating at least a couple “batches” of fiddleheads. This has been a record winter for snow and the melt has been gentle and slow until a few days ago when it rained for twenty-four solid hours! Since fiddleheads grow along the banks of waterways they literally disappeared until the waters receded. Interesting vegetable, huh?

There are two varieties of ferns that are most desirable to eat, the cinnamon fern, a smaller more compact variety, which arrives first, and then the more prized ostrich fern, larger in size and more elegant in flavor. Fiddlehead ferns have a flavor like nothing else. They taste something like the fresh tips of asparagus with the texture of okra. You either like it immediately or you don’t. There is no middle ground or negotiation with this vegetable. Period.

The banks of rivers are covered with people picking huge bags and baskets of this spring delight in large quantities. My sister and I call them the stolen vegetable. No one ever picks their own from their land; it is always people sneaking onto your land and wiping out the fiddlehead crop till next year.

People say we don’t have seasons in LA.  Oh but we do my friends, we do.  For example, now is Artichoke Season, a time when (if you’re lucky) you can find a farmer harvesting huge heavy artichokes with a long stem still attached.  The artichoke head that we eat is the bud stage of a giant gorgeous purple flower.  As the artichoke ages the “leaves” of the bud open ultimately revealing the choke which turns deep lavender.  For eating you want the bud pretty tightly closed.  And look for heavy artichokes.  Heaviness means freshness.  When the artichoke is freshly cut it’s cells are full of water.  As time goes by the water transpires and evaporates leaving the vegetable light and dry.

You can use the artichoke heads as you wish:  boiled, steamed, stuffed, trimmed and braised, hearts only.  But don’t throw away the stems.  If I’m feeling selfish I simply peel away the fibrous outer portion and munch the tender, crunchy, sweet and nutty inner stem.  If I want to impress then I make this artichoke stem salad.  You get one small portion for each stem.  So it’s fun to have a two course meal.  First, a pretty plated salad, then one big beautiful artichoke each to pluck, dip then scrape with your teeth.

Green, white, brown, and blue are my favo combos – this combo is truly classic, season-less and timeless! If you are setting a winter tableaux, a summer soiree or an haute holiday spread, greens and whites with accents of blue and grounds of brown are always apropos.

For this verging vernal setting, daffodils, tulips, blue florets of rosemary and tiny candles in varying tiny sizes all conglomerated together on top of my great-grandmother’s silver tray. I love the complement of silver and wood – it is so handsome and the perfect grounding for any event. Mix in shades of green, creams and whites and pops of blue and your table is set!

Blue willow is a favorite pattern of mine. Mimi and Granddaddy spent the first years of their married life in Japan and I just wish they had brought back crates and crates full of, as Mimi says, “our everyday dishes – there were mounds of blue and white! Imari, Canton-ware, the like!!”

I love hearing their stories of occupied Japan and, yet, I cannot help but feel their love for that culture, their cherished honeymoon years in a foreign, romantic land, helped, somehow, someway, spawn my love of Japanese and Chinioiserie… from gardens to plates!

The weather can't seem to decide what it wants to do, in turn making it hard to decide what to eat: something comforting and cheesy or something fresher and green? I decided the only solution was to combine the two.

One of the great American dishes has got to be macaroni and cheese. Gooey, cheesy and rich with a slight crunch on the top it is pure goodness in a casserole dish. The one problem I have with macaroni and cheese is the guilt. It's soooo rich, it's not the healthiest dish in the world.

One way to make a dish healthier is to cut back on the rich ingredients, like the milk, butter and cheese. Well, that's no fun! I'd rather add in some heathy but tasty stuff as a compromise that really doesn't feel like a compromise at all. My healthy additions are some peas and artichoke hearts, both tasty Spring arrivals. They both go particularly well with gruyere cheese. And gruyere is a perfect cheese for macaroni and cheese.