Spring

I love it when the first bunches of springtime sorrel appear in the market. It has a fantastic sour, lemony-mint thing going on that does something great for clams. The only drawback is that when you cook sorrel, it turns the worst color of brown. Sprinkle it on the dish at the last minute for the best flavor and look. Please try to find guanciale for this dish—it has a delightful fattiness to it that can’t really be replicated. If you can’t find guanciale, use bacon or pancetta instead. Everyone thinks clams have to be cooked over high heat. It’s not necessary in order for the clams to open, and it can render them tough if not done carefully.

At once light and intensely flavorful, poaching with aromatics is a wonderful treatment for black bass. Here, I use spring garlic and onions, but the recipe is easily adaptable to other times of the year. Make sure you use some member of the onion family for flavor; in winter, add shaved radish, fennel . . . use your imagination. This dish goes quickly if you have your fishmonger do the work for you; just ask for the trimmings to take home for making the fumet.

It’s spring in Seattle—that means fresh, tender peas, the first succulent morels, and firm, snowy halibut begging to swim around in a bowl with all that other goodness. For a little bite, I add some shaved Cincinnati radish—a long, mild radish that looks like a baby carrot. This is a lovely dish that puts me in mind of longer, warmer days.

In this pure celebration of spring, Middle Eastern spices add warmth and depth to tender goat, while the season’s first tender offerings—fresh chickpeas, slender spring onions, tart sorrel—make a fabulous accompaniment. Letting the sautéed vegetables cool before adding the sorrel allows it to keep its vibrant color, and it also makes this relaxed, do-ahead party food. Prepare the side while the goat rests and be prepared to covet the leftovers. Fresh chickpeas look like abbreviated little fava beans in the pod, and, like favas, they require a two-step shelling process to get to the little green gems inside. If you can find them, it’s worth every minute of preparation. Fresh chickpeas are sweet and tender, with only a hint of the nuttiness that marks their flavor when dried. The spices can be found in Middle Eastern markets or online.

Save this recipe for late February, when spring garlic first appears in markets. For this dish, it’s best to use larger heads, planning on one large or two small heads per serving. Piecing out the squab makes for much easier eating and allows you to cook the different parts perfectly, with the added bonus that the wings and body add incredible depth and flavor to the sauce. If you think your knife skills aren’t up to par, you can ask your butcher to do it for you, but be sure to reserve all the pieces. If your guests are big eaters, you might want to double the recipe to allow for one squab per person and serve as an entrée. Lentils would make a nice side.

Veal cheeks make the most delicate braise. Using a combination of water and wine for the braising liquid allows the sweet, subtle taste of the veal to really shine through. As a side, you need nothing more than the spring’s first ramps and some gorgeous porcini, kissed by the grill. Some years, it just so happens that the ramp season runs long, or perhaps the porcini season starts early, or both. When the two magically coincide, some amazing things happen. Using foil as insulation for the delicate ramp tops gives the vegetables a simple char on the grill. The veal needs time to become fork-tender, a few hours in all, so plan accordingly.

This is your grown-up chance to play with your food! Frenched lamb chops, also known as lamb lollipops, just beg to be picked up and gnawed on because the clean bones make lovely handles. Even the veg gets in on the interactive eating, with tender spring favas sautéed in their skins. Besides being fun finger food, there’s an added perk to cooking them this way: because they’re not blanched, the favas stay extra-sweet and firm. Just pick them up one by one and pop them into your mouth, like edamame served in Japanese restaurants. Don’t bother setting forks or knives at the table, but I recommend providing plenty of napkins.

This is my idea of bacon and eggs. Thick, homemade bacon adding a smoky, salty touch to gorgeous spring asparagus and tender new-crop potatoes, all crowned with a perfectly poached egg—it doesn’t get much better than this. When you break into the soft yolk, it melts into the vegetables, forming a luxurious sauce. This recipe makes four hearty portions. If you would like to serve six smaller plates, keep the other quantities the same and simply increase the number of eggs.

There are as many springtime things in this salad as possible. In Seattle, we have so much rain that when spring comes, it comes HARD—favas, nettles, peas, spring garlic, and a host of wild little greens that go perfectly together. Regular balsamic vinegar is too heavy; white balsamic still has the sweetness, but it’s lighter and allows the flavors of the vegetables to really shine through. This recipe makes more vinaigrette than you’ll need for the salad. Use the remaining dressing on other combinations of delicate spring vegetables and greens.

This dish is one of the simple joys that comes from freshly dug new potatoes and the inimitable artichoke. You need nothing more than garlic and a hit of thyme to create a side that totally speaks of the earth and that would make even a simple grilled steak sublime.

Wild watercress appears sporadically in farmers’ markets, but it also grows in more places than you might think. In Seattle, it’s positively thick around Lake Washington and easy to find and pick. Whether you forage for your own or buy it from a purveyor, make sure you pick or buy more than you think you’ll need. I like to use only the very freshest tips and bits for the salad. The peppery flavor is a nice contrast to the mild, grassy flavor of the pecorino and marries well with the earthy finish of the artichokes.

This lovely salad can slide from late winter into early spring when bouquets of radishes proliferate in the market. Some people find endive too harsh, but here the flavor is mellowed a bit and the leaves are given extra snap by a saltwater soak. This is a study in textures, with the silky endive accented by the crunch of the nuts, all lightly bound with a tart but delicate Meyer lemon dressing. Because of the egg yolk, the vinaigrette won’t last for more than two days in the fridge, but you’ll find lots of uses for any leftover dressing. Try tossing it with boiled Piccolo potatoes or use it on your favorite greens.

Baby beets shine like tender jewels in this salad, their color offset by creamy, handmade ricotta. Roasting the beets heightens the sweetness, concentrating their flavor, while the orange adds a touch of brightness. I use baby arugula and watercress here, though you can choose any other baby greens that have a little bite to them.

The classic French preparation for snails—bathed in puddles of garlic butter—formed the inspiration for this pasta. Although the agnolotti would be spectacular on their own, wearing only the barest of sauces, adding briny snails and a bright, intensely flavored compound butter makes the dish that much more special. You can find good-quality canned snails at European markets and some high-end grocery stores. Wait to make your sauce until the pasta is cooking; if you heat the butter too far ahead of time, the herbs might brown.

This is a great dish to bridge the end of winter with the beginning of spring. The bite of the garlic and chile is balanced by the mild flavor of spring’s first onions. Long, oblong, and pretty, spring onions are the first indication to me that fresh garbanzos and nettles are on the way, signaling the end of butternut squash and other winter vegetables. If you can’t find cuttlefish, you may use fresh calamari instead, though the cavatelli is a nice balance for the size and texture of the cuttlefish.

Farrotto is a risotto-style dish made with farro instead of rice, but the similarity stops there. Farrotto has a greater depth and nuttiness than regular risotto—not better or worse, just different. It also produces a more textured final dish. It’s out of this world paired with spring’s first earthy morels and peas, which add sweetness and dots of color. For tips on cleaning morels, see page 34. Farro is emmer wheat, often erroneously called “spelt” in English; you can find true farro in fancy grocery stores or specialty Italian markets.

I’ve met a lot of people who are so intimidated by the process it takes to extract the luscious heart from a large thistle that they never go any further with the artichoke than steaming it and melting some butter. There’s nothing wrong with that approach—it’s good eating, for sure—but it does keep you from enjoying a host of dishes that allow this regal vegetable to play a more suave, starring role. The single most common mistake people make when they prep an artichoke is to use a dull knife. Not only home cooks make that mistake, either. I’ve seen professionals prep artichokes so they look like they went through the dryer. Take a steel to your knife and follow the directions carefully, and prepping the hearts should be a breeze, giving you the star ingredient for a lovely spring risotto. This risotto takes a bit more liquid than some others in the book because the artichokes absorb some as they cook. Make sure the butter you add to finish the dish is cold, so it incorporates and adds richness and body.