December 2009

This healthy main is cooked completely on the grill and is flavored by a simple, four-ingredient marinade—so there's very little cleanup required. Some grilled rustic bread would be nice alongside. And if you happen to have fig balsamic vinegar, use it in place of regular. It makes an excellent complement to the other flavors.

Charles Vollmar of Epicurean Exchange in the Bay Area keeps this pesto on the dry side to garnish a saute of spring vegetables. Or thin it with pasta cooking water and use it as a pasta sauce.

The cabbage in this dish, which is flavored with ginger, should be sliced thinly into shreds, as for coleslaw. 

Even though asparagus spears are in markets many months of the year, they're best freshly harvested from local farms. The green spears are the shoots of a perennial lily bulb. When the soil is warm enough the spears shoot up through the surface and head straight for the sun. They grow fast, and are ready to eat, long and thick, just a day after they break through the dirt. For a springtime pasta that stars asparagus, slice thick spears on a diagonal.

The weather is warm, but our own growing season has just begun. Many fruits and vegetables in our markets now were picked before they turned fully ripe (to make shipping easier), so they taste disappointing. One lackluster fruit is tomatoes. To intensify their flavor, roast them in a hot oven with a sprinkle of fresh herbs. Toss the charred tomatoes with penne, serve them as a side dish with roast chicken or grilled salmon, or spoon them onto crusty bread.

Celebrated cookbook author Jacques Pepin made this dish for a party recently. He used the bright coral salmon that you would eat on a bagel with cream cheese. The pate, which is pureed, has the pleasing quality of an unusual tartare. I happened to have some hot-smoked salmon in the fridge and made his pate using that. The fish is nothing like the slightly oily slices of regular smoked salmon. Hot-smoked, as the name suggests, is cooked on a hot fire until it's fully done and flaky. Sometimes called "smoked-roasted" salmon, hot-smoked salmon is usually sold in small pieces.

These are not the traditional Boston baked beans, but rather white beans cooked with tomatoes and lots of herbs. Begin with dried Navy beans or French flageolet, which are pale green, and soak them overnight (the quick-soak method is also given here). Cook the beans in the oven or on top of the stove for a couple hours. When they're done, stir in a large spoonful of pesto. To make a meatier version, add a fresh pork or ham bone to the pot or 1/4 pound finely diced ham.

This recipe makes enough salad for a picnic in the park, or to pack in your lunch all week.

Yield: Makes 6 to 8 servings
Active Time: 20 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes