good cateress newsletter may 07

good cateress, newsletter, May ‘07


May. The beginning of the New season of fruits and vegetables,
something truly worth celebrating! Although this year for us in the
North East it will be a little later than usual, due to our very sad
April. In England they spent Easter sunbathing in their gardens,
while we in New York were inside with rain and cold, feeling quite
miserable. I have ventured to the Green Market two or three times in
recent weeks, full of expectation, there are a few ramps; last week a
few asparagus.

In previous years we have been eating the new seasons greens; Turnips,
mustards, collards, chard even these hardy growers are still to be
seen. For some reason I dont regard these as Spring vegetables,
although clearly they are

When I think of ’new’ vegetables, the one’s we wished on the first
time we ate them that year, I am talking of shelling peas, fava beans,
new potatoes, carrots and asparagus followed by soft fruits,
strawberries, raspberries and then my personal favourites currants and
gooseberries, rarely found here, although Chip in the Green Market
usually has a few.

As a toddler, I am told, I would stand in among the rows of peas, you
could quickly tell how tall I was or how far I could reach by the
height of the remaining peas. One of my earliest memories is of
sitting on the kitchen table with the large yellow colander next to
me, shucking peas, my mother was guiding me in this enterprise,
helping me to put some peas in the colander not just my mouth. My
mother always cooked the new peas with a couple of good pods and a
sprig of mint in the water. Divine!

My other favourite shucker that appears now are Broad Beans known here
as Fava beans. In England we plant them in the Fall and they grow
through the winter ready for an early spring harvest. We grew them
ourselves and occasionally would cut the top leaves off the plant ,
depending on the black fly that seemed to find these plants
particularly tasty, and sauté them with garlic. They were always
sweeter and younger than the store bought beans, as the farmer wanted
a fuller pod for the weight. In England we eat these beans in their
pale grey/green outer skins, which gives them a distinctive slightly
bitter taste. I enjoy them out of those skins as they serve them here,
but I tend to think of them as an entirely different vegetable.

Baby new carrots! I can eat 3 or 4 while driving back uptown from
Union Square. Crunchy, earthy, sweet. The perfect snack and nothing
like the hideous little carrots in bags at the supermarket, again not
even the same vegetable. As I crunch away on the carrots, I am
reminded of Peter Rabbit stealing the farmers carrots in the Beatrix
Potter book.

When I had my appendix removed at the age of 16, in the midst of
moving from the Folly to the Clarendon in Chale on the south side of
the Isle of Wight. The Clarendon an old coaching Inn that had stood
there for 400 or so years, with long views of the west Wight
coastline. A couple of days after the operation, these were in the
days when you kept you in hospital for a week, Mum and Janette
appeared in the ward with a trug filled with Mrs. Kings new carrots
and peas to cheer me up. It was heaven after the truly inedible
hospital food, I happily sat up in bed shucking the peas, chomping the
carrots and quickly thereafter recovered. The hospital staff and
other people in the ward just thought it was all too peculiar!

Asparagus too. My mother always had asparagus for her birthday in
May, in honour of her on her birthday I always eat them and toast
her, fortunately on saturday at Union Square there were a few local
asparagus. My first asparagus, having grown up in Germany were the
large white European variety. We did love those large white
asparagus, we were allowed four stalks of mums birthday treat. For
those that don't know, the Peruvian white asparagus available here
while they might look like European white asparagus, actually bear no
resemblance to them at all; although the distinctive flavor is mildly
sensed.

Our first year back on the Isle of wight, we had been living there
about a month, it was May mums birthday I thought I would buy her Isle
of Wight asparagus for her present, the shopkeeper showed me green
asparagus. I was horrified I had never seen them that colour and
declined them! I quickly grew to love and appreciate them.

But my favourite of all new Spring produce is buttery new potatoes,
boiled with a mint sprig, giving them a slight minty flavour. Why is
it so hard to find good new potatoes that you scrape rather than peel
here? It has always bewildered me the lack of seasonal and variety of
potatoes here in America. Every where we lived in Europe we had them,
so why is America so happy to put up with an Idaho baker year round,
so boring. In his book Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan talks about
potatoes and how the Peruvian Inca’s grew 100’s of different varieties
of potatoes for many different things, perhaps they should go back to
that and stop growing white asparagus.

A new potato has skin that you can literally remove by running your
thumbnail across it, hence scraping them. At the end of May beginning
of June in England, the Jersey Royals arrive from the Channel
islands. Perhaps the king of new potatoes, as a child I could eat 15
or so potatoes in one sitting.

Is there a meal more redolent of Spring than Roast leg or shoulder of
local new lamb served with fresh garden picked mint sauce; new
potatoes, carrots and peas, followed by local strawberries and cream.
I can smell and taste it all.

Finally, in May the woods and copses are full of bluebells, you look
at a carpet of blue, with a light fragrance and the buzzing of insects
sucking the nectar of pollen.


Here we go into summer....