A Puttanesca for Early Spring

Whenever I take over the newsletter from Melissa Clark for a day, I feel like the wacky sitcom neighbor who always shows up when it’s time to eat.

So let’s get into it. Over the course of my long reporting career, I’ve lived in all quadrants of America. And one of the great joys of moving around a lot is learning the different ways spring expresses itself in kitchens across the nation.

California’s April asparagus and artichokes are North Carolina’s radishes and snow peas. Georgia’s strawberries are Ohio’s morel mushrooms.

I’ve always been baffled by how much New York cooks worship ramps as their spring talisman. If we’re talking alliums, I prefer green garlic as a spring harbinger. Ramps are garlic’s murky younger cousin, the one who spent some time in juvie. Green garlic is the bright, younger sister who spent a summer interning at an organic farm collective.

You can use nearly a dozen fat green garlic cloves in Melissa’s pasta with green puttanesca, which marries them with the fabulous, salty punch of anchovies and olives with a handful of young greens.

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Pasta With Green Puttanesca

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My father reported from the Colorado mountains that a heavy, wet snowstorm had come through recently. For those of you still in winter boots, consider an easy, warming bowl of Yossy Arefi’s sausage and barley soup with greens. Mix in some tender baby kale or spinach at the end. Spring is on the way!

Since we are in Yossy’s neighborhood already, her miso-honey chicken and asparagus gives one of my favorite spring vegetables a star turn. You broil the whole thing on a foil-lined baking sheet for a fast supper that delivers lots of charred deliciousness. Many readers commented that they bake it to good effect. They also say the sauce is so delicious you should double it — it’d be a great thing to pull from the freezer when you need to make some tofu or pork interesting on a school night.

I don’t want my spring radish friends to think I’ve forgotten about them. This cottage cheese dip, which Polish radishes know as gzik, relies on their spicy bite for character. Small curd cottage cheese works best. Try it on a baked potato.

Carrots, beets and fennel show up as a spring throuple in Yewande Komolafe’s smart recipe for roasted vegetables with creamy coconut dressing. It’s essentially a warm salad. Making a dressing from coconut milk punched up with ginger, fish sauce and Dijon is culinary alchemy. And I’m awfully fond of how she uses fennel fronds as the finishing kiss.

I’ll leave you with Melissa’s rhubarb custard bars. When I was a young reporter in Anchorage, as soon as the last of the snow had melted, I’d look for the first crinkly red rhubarb knuckles that had pushed through earth. They reminded me that I had survived another winter in Alaska. But you came here for recipes, not memories, and this recipe is a great one.

Softening and sweetening the rhubarb on the stove takes a little time, but the rest is easy. You whirl the cooked rhubarb with eggs, lemon and sugar in a food processor, then pour it over a shortbread crust that even the baking-challenged (looks in mirror) can nail.

I can’t guarantee that the thousands of recipes at New York Times Cooking will spark memories, but they will produce beautiful meals. That beauty comes with a price. So thanks to everyone who has subscribed already. And if you haven’t, you can remedy that here.