A Greek meal worthy of the gods.

This weekend, Oakland's Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension is hosting their annual Oakland Greek Festival. Besides being a gathering of some of the East Bay's most colorful and enthusiastic Greek residents, the festival is home to some of the best Greek food the Bay Area has to offer.

Yesterday I hit up the festival's opening day, and was completely bowled over by the amount of food available. Every possible Greek delight you can imagine was being prepared by local cooks, from whole lamb on a spit to flaming cheese (seriously -- stand back when they set it on fire!). Saturday and Sunday are filled with Greek cooking demonstrations. If you've got some free time this weekend, can you think of a better way to spend a few hours?

Fresh calamari and French fries

Breading the calamari by hand.

John Constantine, calamari Superman

Flaming cheese -- this you really have to try.

Lamb goddess Karen Kolokithas

Fresh baklava, ready for a new home.

What kind of Greek festival would it be without the requisite feta and olives?

Loukoumades, or honey-dipped pastry puffs. There are not words.

Assorted Greek goodies for sale.

Alyssa Landis dishes out some of the most incredible lamb I've ever tasted.

Happy Greek chefs!

More luscious lamby bits...

Harry Greer unwrapping his lamb on a spit.

The [rather large] lamb, in all its glory.

Anna Wade grills meat for gyros.

Brittany Wade shows off her winning gyro-making skills.

2011 Oakland Greek Orthodox Festival: May 13, 14, 15
Oakland's Greek Orthodox Cathedral of the Ascension
4700 Lincoln Ave
Oakland, CA 94602

Admission: $6 for adults, children under 12 free. With a coupon, you can receive $1 off adult admission.

Happy May Day! My middle sister spent her college years at a small Seven Sisters school known for both its academic rigor and its fondness for Anglophile-ish, slightly archaic traditions (lots of teas there). On May 1st, the president of the college would ride into campus on a white horse, and students wore flower crowns and white dresses and sang hymns to the May before having strawberries and cream for breakfast.

White horses, sadly, do not have full representation in my part of Temescal. But the strawberries from just south of here are finally starting to get sweet (all that rain delayed the season somewhat). If you look, you can probably find some rhubarb, too. Any new kind of fruit is very welcome right now, during this season when the weather feels like spring but winter's kales and citrus are still hanging on.

Rhubarb

Remember that rainy scene in the beginning of Animal Vegetable Miracle, when author Barbara Kingsolver, in the first week of her locavore experiment, is despondent at the thought of returning home to her banana-less household with no fruit? Drenched by a spring downpour, she splashes through the farmers' market and is rewarded at last with a beautiful bundle of red-stemmed rhubarb.

Unless you're a gardener and an old-fashioned pie-lover, you've probably never seen rhubarb growing, and you might not recognize it even if you did. A perennial plant, it forms a low, leafy mound, with wide spinachy leaves the size of a hat. Look under the leaves and you'll see long, reddish stalks coming up from the ground. Grip one firmly and pull it out. Trim off the mildly toxic leaf, and there you have it, a sour, sour stalk of what used to be called pieplant.

Still, it doesn't take much sweetening to bring out its lovely tangy fruitiness, one that matches incredibly well with both strawberries and orange.

Lots of recipes tell you to put the rhubarb through all sorts of elaborate machinations before putting it in the pie. What a bunch of, well, rhubarb! Just cut it up, toss it with sugar and a little cornstarch, and you're on your way to pie heaven. The only caveat is that rhubarb contains a lot of water, which the sugar will pull out, so you want to make your filling just before you're ready to bake your pie. Otherwise, you'll end up with a lot of small pieces of fruit floating in a big puddle of syrupy liquid.

Don't go overboard with the cornstarch; being juicy is one of this pie's homemade charms. Vanilla ice cream is the perfect accompaniment.

Because this is a very juicy pie, it's good to use a lattice crust to let the steam out. Yes, making a proper lattice does take some concentration and a little finger-dexterity, but I find the few minutes' effort to be well-rewarded by the amazement this fancy-pants basket weave inspires. If, for some smart reason, your utensil drawer contains a little crinkled-edged pastry or ravioli wheel, now's the time to use it. It will make your pie crust look incredibly 1950s-cute.

So, this is how you do it: Lay your longest strip of dough across the middle of the pie. Then lay another long strip crosswise across the middle. Lay another strip down next the first. Then lay down another crosswise strip, only weave it under the first strip and over the second one. Keep doing this, alternating vertical and horizontal strips, lifting the strips as necessary to get that cute under-and-over pattern. If your strip breaks, just jam the pieces back together or hide the broken parts under another strip.

You can make this either as one pie or six three- to four-inch tarts. In order to get the right crust-to-fruit ratio, I would use tart pans or ramekins that are at least two inches deep.

Sugar Snap Pea Salad

Spring Fever has officially hit. Mulch is in the air, mini-skirts are on the streets, and farmers' markets are in full bloom.

I couldn't resist these brilliant green sugar snap peas the other day. Sweet, crunchy, and juicy, I've even been chomping on them raw. Grassy and tender, they taste like pure Spring.

Sugar Snap Peas

Snap peas are a cross between snow peas and garden peas. Like the snow pea, the pods are edible; like the garden pea, the pods are round rather than flat. When sugar snap peas are young and in-season like they are now, you don't even need to "de-string" them (removing that pesky fibrous strand that runs lengthwise from tip to tip), making them perfect for an easy, light salad.

Snap Pea Prep

I blanched the snap peas first for a few minutes before shocking them in an ice bath. This made them tender but still delightfully crunchy. For texture, I shelled half of them, popping out the little round peas, and then julienned the empty pods into matchsticks. The remaining half of the snap peas I left whole, although, you could certainly continue slicing up the whole bunch.

Select the plumper/rounder snap peas to shell, they have larger peas inside.

To the sugar snap peas, I added a handful of refreshing mint, toasted almonds, and sweet caramelized onions. The dish is finished off with a simple, brightly acidic vinaigrette of lemon, rice vinegar, and olive oil.

Onion to be caramelized

This vibrant, fresh green salad is an interesting alternative to your normal leafy salad. It would also make a great substitution for coleslaw given all the crunchy textures.

California grass is here! Fat or slender, steamed or roasted, even deep-fried: it's just a week until the official beginning of spring, and that means, after a long winter of kale, kale, collards, and kale, beautiful asparagus--called 'grass' in the produce biz--is reappearing this month, right alongside the daffodils, tulips, and magnolia blossoms brightening every front yard.

Asparagus, you might be surprised to find out, used to be considered a member of the lily family (Liliaceae), which also included onions, garlic, leeks and the rest of the edible and ornamental alliums. But the botanical powers that be have since split that family, making a separate Asparagaceae genus of some 300 mostly ornamental species. However, unless you have a botany geek among your midst, it's still fun to amaze your friends with your mastery of obscure plant facts by mentioning the asparagus-lily connection, should conversation around the buffet need a goose.

What's really interesting, however, is how asparagus grows. It's a perennial plant, for starters, growing from a tangled, ring-like "crown" planted some six to eight inches below the surface of the soil. Once an asparagus patch is well established (it generally takes about 3 years to become fully productive), it can last for decades. The asparagus spears work like bulbs--in the same way that tulips and daffodils push up their stems and leaves from their storehouse underground, so an asparagus patch can be bare dirt one day and a forest of insouciant little tips the next. The spears come up in leaps and bounds, an inch one morning and practically full-size the next.

Some commercial asparagus growers have to harvest their fields several times a day to keep a consistent size and shape. The spears come up without distraction--no leaves, no flowers, no frills. Once they're long enough to harvest, out come the knives, cutting them off just below soil level. Like peas, asparagus are most tender and succulent straight out of the garden, which makes them worth seeking out straight from the farmer rather than at the supermarket.

The stalks should be turgid and smooth, not flaccid, pithy, or ridged. The tiny leaves should still be tight against the stalk, and the tips should be firm, the leaf tips closed with no sign of rot or sliminess at the top. The best way to judge freshness is to look at the base: really fresh asparagus will look moist, almost translucent. A day later, it's chalky; after that, it's solid white, with woodiness moving up the stalk.

You can feel where the tenderness of an asparagus stalk starts, just by bending it gently about three-quarters of the way down the stalk. Hold it with the tip pointing to your right, and you'll feel it: tender over to the right, woody to the left. Snap it right where the stiffness gives, keeping in mind that the fresher it is, the less you'll have to take off.

Cooking asparagus is a lot like cooking corn: you're not so much cooking it as just heating it through, nudging it gently over the line from raw to tender. Asparagus moves very quickly from green and tender to khaki and mush, and once gone, there's no bringing it back. You can steam-simmer it in a wide, flat saute pan, spreading it out in a bare half-inch of boiling salted water, moving it around with tongs to keep it cooking evenly, whisking it out into an ice bath the moment it starts to give.

Or you can flash-roast it, my favorite method. Preheat your oven to 450F. Lay your asparagus out on a baking sheet, drizzling olive oil over the tips, rolling the rest of the spears around in whatever's left. Go lightly: you don't want the stalks to dry up like paper in oven's blast of heat, but neither do you want them dripping and soggy with oil. Sprinkle with sea salt and grind on some coarse black pepper. Pop in the oven for 5-7 minutes, depending on your oven. They should be supple with perhaps a little ambered charring here and there. Again, don't overdo it, otherwise the lovely succulent tips will end up shriveled and chewy-brown.

To serve them as is, add a generous squeeze of lemon juice and perhaps a little flurry of finely grated lemon rind. (Meyer lemons are very nice, should you have a backyard tree.) Tangerine or even blood-orange juice can make for an interesting change. I find that roasted asparagus tastes best still warm; if you're planning to cook ahead, I'd stick with steaming, and don't put anything acid (citrus juice, vinegar) onto it until just before serving, as the acid will turn your grass from bright green to a muddy pea-soup shade very quickly.

Hollandaise sauce, in my opinion, is the most perfect accompaniment to asparagus, a suitably rich gilding for the season's first crop. But with its tricky-to-make reputation and Mad-Men ingredient list (butter, butter, egg yolks, lemon juice, butter), it's pretty much fallen out of favor among home cooks, reserved only for eggs Benedict at birthday brunches. Instead, here's a lovely spring salad to green up your table, just in time for St. Patrick's Day this week.

Blackberry Cornmeal Muffins from my blog, A Sweet Spoonful

There's something about this time of year. I find myself baking much more frequently, leaving the Kitchen Aid out on the counter instead of storing it in its proper winter-time home, and bookmarking dessert recipes right and left. Then I start thinking about opening a bakery...but that's a whole different post. On my own blog recently, I've made very special muffins (above) and Jim Lahey's whole wheat bread. And I have big plans for some cupcakes for a party I'm attending this week. So I'm certainly not lacking in the inspiration department. But you've got to be prepared with everything you need, the recipes that inspire, and a few extras just for fun. So here are some of my favorite things to help kick start your time in the kitchen this spring:

Batter Bowls

Some love them, some hate them: you either find them useful in an 'Oh, my mom used those for our pancakes' kind of way or you're not quite sure what to do with them. But batter bowls are actually fabulous: you can mix batters right inside the bowl and neatly pour into your cupcake tins, waffle-maker, or cheesecake pan. I also use them to help pour eggs for omelettes and I might occasionally mix and pour cocktails in my batter bowl. Yes, you heard that right. You can get them many places, but I find Stonewall Kitchen's batter bowls to be very sweet--nice spring colors and a generous handle.

Prettiest Apron You'll Ever See

I can't get enough of Ice Milk Aprons. I actually don't own one yet, but I gawk frequently online. They're a small family company that does heirloom aprons that are super simple and inspired by the founder's grandmother who always wore an apron when she fixed a dinner of waffles, fresh fruit, and ice milk at home. They do full traditional aprons, but they also do a gorgeous "Rolling Pin Waist" style that is more life a half apron with a sash up top. In many ways, they're almost too pretty to really muck up in the kitchen--but that hasn't stopped me from hinting to friends and family.

Baking Supplies

While I obviously support going to your local cookware shop, I have found the folks at Layer Cake Shop stock some interesting baking accoutrement that you may not be able to find as easily all in one spot. I love their simple paper tags that come in a variety of colors--great for labeling desserts. And they have all different colors of bakers twine and an incredible variety of little muffin and cupcake cups. Useful and inspiring.

Cupcake Toppers

Once you make those cupcakes, you're going to want to decorate them. And this is where on one recent Sunday morning I got sucked down the Etsy rabbit hole. You know the one I'm talking about--the one where you start looking at one shop and all of a sudden you've lost two hours of your life. Well I took a liking to these vintage-inspired cupcake toppers. The seller scanned in prints of the 1950's ladies from her vintage cookbook collection and mounted them on a sturdy bamboo stick. She'll also work with you on different colors of backing or increased quantities for larger parties.

Good Quality Vanilla (and other extracts)

No cutesy aprons here folks. For your spring baking projects this year, be sure you're using really good quality vanilla--whether it's an extract, a vanilla bean, or vanilla paste (my absolute favorite discovery of the year). Nielsen Massey not only stocks incredible vanilla, but they also do harder to find extracts that I'm excited to experiment with. They have chocolate, coffee, and a really nice lemon extract. You can check out their online site and they'll guide you to shops in your area that stock what you're looking for, and they have great information on the history of vanilla and how to choose which product is right for you.

Three Book Suggestions
Now this isn't a formal review because I only own one of these books. But here are a few recent baking books that have come out that I'm eager to get my hands on. If you're looking for a little baking inspiration, look no further:

• Deborah Madison's Seasonal Fruit Desserts: I'm a huge Madison fan, and have made many of her vegetarian entrees in the kitchen, but I'm even more excited to try out some of her well-regarded dessert recipes. She's the master of seasonal recipes, and this is no exception.
• Kim Boyce's Good to the Grain: I've leafed through this book and the photos by Quentin Bacon are truly stunning. But even more important--the recipes are really exciting. Boyce makes baking with whole-grain flours (not always an easy feat) look approachable and second-nature. And we're not just talking whole-wheat flour: she experiments with teff and amaranth and twelve different kinds of other whole-grain flours. I can't wait to start baking from this book.
• David Lebovitz's Ready For Dessert: If you're tuned into the food blogging world, there's been a lot of talk about this book ever since it came out. I have Lebovitz's other books so initially I was hesitant to purchase this one, but there's something appealing about having the best recipes all within easy reach (plus, those photos!). For those who aren't familiar with his recipes, this is the perfect book for you. From relatively easy cookie recipes to Lebovtiz's incredible sauces--inspiration abounds here.

On Sunday, I celebrated my birthday -- along with Vincent Gallo, Joss Stone, and Ethel Kennedy. When I was a child, birthday fetes were pretty sloppy, far wilder than any of the parties I attended in high school or college. They went down at the zoo, parks, public pools, and pizza buffets, where sweaty kids, red-faced from exertion and sauce, bounced around and challenged each other to contests of consumption. There was always cake, homemade at mine. While sweets have never been my thing, leftover cake for breakfast -- straight from the fridge, with hard cold frosting that peels right off -- was an irresistible coda to the annual gathering, so appealing that, on several occasions, in a rare greedy moment, I actually asked my mom to bake and stow away a second cake -- just in case my friends managed to vaporize the first.

I don't remember specific birthday parties so well. Somewhere along the way, they stopped happening, probably when dessert-oriented affairs lost their luster -- and I stopped caring about getting older in the first place. Years unfolded like symphonies then, long, meandering and dense, narratives stretching out, passing through movements, moods and phases. Now, they are proggy rock productions, half as long yet still intricate and hefty. Ten birthdays from Sunday, they will be pop songs, economical, straight to the point -- verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, out.

My birthday was a big one, a landmark -- or so I have been told. No one over 35 sympathizes when someone whines about turning 30. "Big deal" and "get over it" are common responses. At the corner store on Friday, I was buying some beer. "So, how old are you, bro?" the cashier suddenly asked -- a now familiar casual alternative to actually requesting identification. I told him I was a few days away from turning 30, and he groaned. "Bro, 30 blows," he sighed, shaking his head, dropping my six-pack into a paper bag. "My 20s were awesome, and then it went downhill." I shrugged. "I'm don't care," I said. "But, you know -- I'm 32, and you're just 30," he added helpfully -- hopefully starting to feel like an idiot. "It won't be too bad."

The arrival of spring wasn't always about green garlic, favas, fresh peas, asparagus, and the start of the N.B.A. playoffs. Beginning with my 25th -- a silly excuse for a milestone, really -- it revolved around anticipating and dreading my birthday -- so much that I actually tried to keep the date a secret for a while. I have come a long way. Now, I realize though that my problem with birthdays isn't so much an aversion to growing older as the idea of celebrating the passage of time so personally. I don't want my friends to gather and toast me just because I'm a littler older. I don't want to be the center of that kind of attention. Some people organize dinners for themselves, invite everyone they know to bars, and throw house parties. Me, I only want to get away.

This past weekend, instead of donning skins and venturing off into the woods alone to nibble rodents and pick berries, I faced the dawn of my fourth decade with calm and an appropriate aura of maturity. I went to Wine Country with my girlfriend, but we did not go to wineries, take hikes, or shop. Instead, we watched cooking shows and basketball from a bed at a Best Western smelling fairly strongly of cat, sweat and old coffee, napped, and left our dark little room only to eat -- at Ad Hoc, Thomas Keller's two-and-a-half-year-old restaurant in Yountville.

Offering a single family-style menu on every night that it is open, Ad Hoc suits a birthday dinner. The four-course menu -- a salad, an entree, a cheese, and a dessert -- is announced via email every morning. Unless you have a dietary aversion to something, you eat what is offered. The relative inflexibility of a meal at Ad Hoc evokes the inevitable march of birthdays. You don't get to choose how fast you get older; you just age. If you make a reservation three months in advance, and you find out veal will be served, and you happen not to like veal, you either stay home or give veal another chance.

Downtown Yountville didn't impress me much. As we rolled through, the buildings seemed silly and new, as if part of a set. Even signs pointing out places of note rubbed me the wrong way. They were narrow wooden rectangles, the names printed or carved on in quirky fonts, reminiscent of signage at campsites and in tourist-heavy Gold Rush towns. As we crossed Washington St., ambling towards the restaurant, a middle-aged man in a two-tone North Face jacket -- literally, a city slicker -- walked past with his party. "I'm gonna retire here," he said emphatically to the woman with an arm tucked under his. I would rather chug acid rain, I thought, as a few ominous drops splashed symbolically from the sky. Yet when we stepped into Ad Hoc, all gripes vanished. Warm, hungry, we sat down at our table, and just as I flung open the brown folder containing the wine list, the opening strains of Michael Jackson's Beethoven-indebted "Will You Be There" wafted over from invisible stereo speakers like steam rolling off a roast. Despite its popcorn-spiritual lyrical heft, hearing it at that moment made me feel quite peaceful, comfortable with my impending birthday, and even more overjoyed than usual to be spending it with the person sitting across from me.

The salad and a flute of Cremant du Jura arrived before I could feel too weird about digging a song off the Free Willy soundtrack. The salad was the kind of California comfort food Californians should be proud of. Every ingredient was beautiful, presented artfully, and perfectly cooked. The beans were leprechaun-green, simultaneously snappy and slippery. There were sweet pale green apple slices, curling wafers of rose-colored radish, thicker potato coins, soft and creamy, melting flakes of salt, frisee and fried polenta cubes, crusty brown on the outside, still oozing within. It was actually exciting, a humble masterpiece. With lovely, harmonious flavors, the dish celebrated produce but without an dulling, dogmatic degree of simplicity and purity. An herb-crusted lamb sirloin followed, majestic pink hunks over pine nuts, golden raisins, buttered barley, and rainbow chard in a silver serving dish, and, after that, a raw milk "Vermont Ayr," nutty and sour, perfect with roasted almonds, pistachios, and pecans, and drizzles of orange blossom honey. The dinner ended with a light, creamy bread pudding studded with croissant chunks, chocolate chips and bits of medjool date. The evening concluded with an episode of Iron Chef back at the hotel.

In the morning, we ate a free continental breakfast at the Marie Callender's across from the inn. We drove home in a gale of rain, planning to stop at Berkeley Bowl for cheap sushi and groceries before heading into San Francisco.

I thought about Ad Hoc on the way home. In that it was originally conceived as a temporary establishment, the restaurant sort of evokes life itself. Life is, of course, very temporary. It starts, sometimes accidentally, often unsurely, and you don't know when it will end. Hopefully, it keeps going, each birthday ticking off another little notch in time's passing, ending only after you get to do most of the things you want to do. Ad Hoc has kept going, much longer than Keller anticipated it would. It turned out to be fun, a winning concept -- unique, exciting, and relatively affordable -- so it was not swiftly reconfigured as a burger joint or another Keller-ific experiment. It was allowed to simply continue, to breathe and evolve. I feel privileged to do the same.

Picking lemons from my mom's generous backyard lemon tree

Spring has sprung in the Bay Area. Unless you've been living under a rock, I'm sure this isn't news to you. Haven't you noticed coworkers with a little extra spring in their step--perhaps an unexpected smile on the bus? Asparagus is in the markets, flowers are popping up at the corner store by my place, and it's no longer getting dark at 5:30 p.m. Hallelujah. For me, there's something so appealing about the notion of fresh starts, new beginnings, and second chances that always leads me to put spring on a bit of a pedestal. Who doesn't love the chance at a new beginning? Even if it doesn't come to fruition literally, spring always gives me a surge of creativity and energy. It means going for runs after work instead of hunkering down, making fresh salads for dinner, and doing a little spring time baking. So here we find ourselves.

I spent some time at my mom's place in Marin last weekend and she has an amazing lemon tree with more lemons than she knows what to do with. I started bagging some up and racked my brain for what I wanted to do with them. Then I remembered reading a recipe for a Lemon Pudding Cake recently that I was curious to try. The recipe is from one of my first blogging friends, Kelsey, over at The Naptime Chef. If you haven't seen her blog, it's pretty great. She loves cooking and baking but found herself strapped for time after having her first child. So she started choosing and adapting recipes for the naptime hour--most that can be done in an hour or less. While I don't have kids, I appreciate Kelsey's tasteful recipe choices, great cookbook recommendations, and smart voice. Oh, and this cake.

A bowl of Lemon Pudding Cake right out of the oven. Enough said.

Kelsey adapted this cake recipe from Cooks Illustrated Entertaining 2010. As printed, the directions were much more complex, so Kelsey made it more approachable and do-able in under an hour. It's somewhere in between a luscious lemon pudding and a light fluffy cake, and I loved it right out of the oven. But I've also discovered that, with a cup of strong coffee, it makes a nice breakfast. And in addition to Kelsey's recipe, I've included some links below for other lemon desserts popping up around the web--all from bloggers or food sites that I read regularly. So here's to new beginnings, fresh starts, and cake for breakfast.

Juicing, Zesting, Mixing, and Separating: all in the name of Lemon Pudding Cake!

Lemon Pudding Cake
From: The Naptime Chef; adapted from Cooks Illustrated Entertaining

Makes: 8-10 servings

Ingredients:
1 1/4 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tsp. cornstarch
1 1/4 cups sugar
5 Tbsp. unsalted butter, room temperature
2 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
1/2 cups fresh lemon juice
1 1/4 cups whole milk
5 eggs, separated; yolks in one bowl with whites in another

Preparation:
1. Adjust oven rack to center position and heat oven to 325 degrees. Lightly butter an 8" square baking pan. Bring several quarts of water to boil for water bath. Mix flour and cornstarch together in a bowl, set aside.
2. Cream the butter, 1 cup of the sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Then, beat in the egg yolks and flour mixture, mixing until smooth. Slowly mix in the lemon juice, then stir in the milk.
3. Set the custard mixture aside and beat the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Then, add the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar and beat egg whites to stiff, moist peaks. Gently stir a dollop of the egg whites into the custard. Then, working slowly, fold the remaining egg whites in bit by bit until they are all incorporated, but not overly beaten.
4. Pour the batter into the baking pan and place the pan inside a larger baking pan. Then fill the larger baking pan with hot water bath until it comes halfway up the side of the pan. Bake until pudding cake center is set and springs back when gently touched, about 1 hour. Remove roasting pan from oven and let pan cool for 1 hour before serving.

Other Lemon Desserts to Check Out:

• One of my favorite bloggers, Tim over at Lottie + Doof, made The Ultimate Lemon Butter Bars
• The Kitchn featured a recipe last week for Sticky Lemon Rolls with Lemon Cream Cheese Glaze
• Denise Santoro Lincoln makes Homemade Meyer Lemon Marmalade for Bay Area Bites
• I've heard very good things about David Leibovitz's Lemon Tart recipe
• Joy the Baker whips up Lemon Tea Cloud Cookies

Because I was such a picky eater as a kid and gagged over nearly everything, I can always recall precisely when my feelings toward certain foods took a turn for the better. Not only that, but I clearly remember how the food was prepared, and I know exactly what I read that piqued my interest in the hated food in the first place. Yes, reading makes me hungry for food I wouldn't otherwise touch with a ten-foot fork.*

I'm not talking about such usual suspects as Calvin Trillin, M.F.K. Fisher, or Eat Pray Love, either. No, my inspirations were much weirder. For instance, Bread and Jam for Frances got me eating soft-boiled eggs when all I used to endure was scrambled; Gerald Durrell had me craving grilled tomatoes on toast; Dickens made me try plum pudding; and perhaps most importantly of all, Sweet Valley High got me into asparagus.

It was in Power Play. Wealthy and spoiled Lila Fowler is caught shoplifting to get her father's attention. The angelic, nosy, and -- as of this year -- "perfect size 4" Elizabeth Wakefield manages to come to Lila's rescue. Because of this, Mr. and Lila Fowler take Elizabeth out to a fancy restaurant to thank her for being nosy and angelic and having a gold lavaliere. Never mind that Lila eventually went back to her rich-bitchy ways. Never mind that the main story is all about "chubby" Robin Wilson losing weight, gaining lip gloss, and making Bruce Patman walk into a door -- all I took away from that book was that Elizabeth had asparagus tips at the fancy restaurant.

Asparagus tips. I kept turning the words over and over in my head. I wanted asparagus tips. Except that I didn't really, did I? My older sister and I used to go around giggle-whispering, "Asparag-ASS" whenever that vegetable came up in polite conversation. (We thought we were so clever.) I remember wishing longingly that "asparagus tips" weren't a vegetable. That it meant something else entirely, preferably having to do with meat, Doritos, or cream cheese.

Nevertheless, I finally tried it. I tried it roasted. I wallowed in the crispy, olive oil-saturated tips. I got primal and ate with my hands. I sucked the salt and pepper of my asparagussed fingertips. My longing was requited, and I was crushing hard. Asparagus is back in season and tonight I'm having my spring crush over for dinner. He needn't dress, it's nothing fancy.

Simply Roasted Asparagus

Serves 4 as a side dish

Ingredients

1 lb asparagus, tough ends snapped off
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano

Preparation

Preheat oven to 400°

1. Toss the asparagus with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Roast for 8-10 minutes.
2. Serve cold with Parmigiano-Reggiano.
*(Conversely, Ramona Quimby made me despise tongue and Fig Newtons even to this day.)

California produce has slain yet another one of my Hate Foods. There were quite a few groups things I refused to eat as a kid and peas were definitely one of them. I hated the mushy, tasteless, mean little things. If I piled enough butter and salt on them, I could just swallow them down with a big slosh of water but my gag reflex still worked overtime.

Last weekend, I was picking through the produce at the Sunset Andronico's and my eyes fell on the big smooth pods of English peas. Without thinking too hard about what I would do, I started stuffing them in a plastic bag.

Once at home, I perched on a sunny stool in the kitchen and took old-fashioned pleasure in slitting the pods open with my thumbnail and rolling the pale fat peas into a bowl. A few seconds dip in rapidly boiling water and slightly longer in a shocking ice bath and my peas were ready. Firm and mouth-popping, the peas were as smooth as a freshly Botoxed baby's bottom with nary a wrinkle to be found. But what to do with them?

I pulled out the butter and salt and stared at them. Ugh, I couldn't go that route. While I love the simplicity of salt and butter when oven-roasting or steaming summer corn, in order to fully expunge my childhood memories, I definitely needed something completely different. Since the peas were already cold, I opted for a salad. Peppery watercress, slightly bitter endive, and flaked ivory shavings of salty Pecorino Romano in a light lemony vinaigrette all brought out the sweetness of the spring pearls.

English Pea Salad

Serves 4

1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 tablespoon Champagne vinegar
4-5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
2 1/2 cups shelled English peas
Three heads of Belgian endive, bruised leaves removed
2 bunches small-leaved watercress, about 1 lb
Pecorino Romano, or an aged sheep's cheese of your choice

1. Whisk the lemon juice, vinegar, and olive oil together. Add salt and pepper and taste. Adjust seasonings to your preference. Set vinaigrette aside.

2. Fill a large, heavy-bottomed pot with cold water and bring to a rolling boil. Add the shelled peas and cook for about 45 seconds. Plunge the cooked peas in an ice bath to stop the cooking.

3. Slice the endive at an angle and put the slivers in a large bowl. Add the watercress and drained peas and toss with the vinaigrette until glistening.

4. Serve the salad on individual plates and shave the Pecorino Romano over each portion. Use as much cheese as you like.

My parents travel light, so when they told me they were waiting at the baggage carousel, I knew some food had made its way from Missouri to California. I've been treated before to freshly dug potatoes, bags of dewy herbs, a catfish with its whiskers still intact, gooseberry jam, homemade beef jerky, and a selection of Kansas City's finest BBQ sauces. As we approached the airport, I wondered what treats we'd be unpacking this time.

Before boarding that morning's plane, my mom had picked asparagus and packed them into conveniently shaped bags stashed from her newspaper delivery. Earlier in the week, when a freeze recently threatened her food supply, she'd covered her asparagus tips to insulate them from the cold. Some of the stalks were caught in the cover and curled into tight spirals. Though kinda funny-looking, they taste just as good.

As anyone who has tried to grow asparagus knows, they are a labor of love. The scraggly crowns require double-dug trenches and lots of compost-rich soil. Asparagus plants take two to three years to begin producing, and once they start sending up their shoots, they require vigilance from the gardener-cook. Reinvigorated after a winter's rest, the ground pushes out those asparagus stalks with astonishing speed. If you forget to pick your 3-inch baby tips before you head off to work, you just might find 12-inch giants when you return later that afternoon, and perhaps a flowering stalk or two by nightfall.

If you have the space, though, it's definitely worth all the coddling and cutting. I can swear to the truth: freshly harvested asparagus that hasn't traveled further than the distance of your yard (with perhaps a quick plane ride carried by someone you love) are as sweet and tender as the heart of spring.

MY FAVORITE WAY TO EAT THE YEAR'S FIRST ASPARAGUS

Roll the asparagus stalks gently in olive oil, and then sprinkle with a hint of salt and black pepper. Fire up your grill. While it heats, split a few hotdog buns, preferably the lovely egg-enriched ones from Acme Bread. It's fun to set out a selection of your favorite condiments. Some of mine include Sukhi's tomato chutney, Happy Girl's pickled peppers, basil pesto, or thin shavings of Parmigiano Reggiano.

Once your grill is hot, flash the asparagus just until they show a touch of char at their tips. I like mine with a bit of bite at their stalk ends, but go ahead and cook yours to the point you prefer. With tongs, nestle a few asparagus stalks in each of the hot dog buns. Top with your favorite dressing or condiments, or leave bare and beautiful.

Enjoy.