Spring vegetables are in, and around our house that means salads and pasta. With enough veggies, you can have both in one bowl. You could call this a "pasta primavera", I suppose, although that name has been abused enough that I'd just as well rather not.

I'll give you an actual recipe with quantities for this pasta, but change it according to what spring veggies you actually have available. Just try to get a good variety. Here in Oregon we've had a terrific asparagus season, with local asparagus available for five weeks now, so that definitely goes in. Our snap peas have started to fruit, so I used those. Herbs, spinach, and spring onions all looked good at the market, so I used those too. And we can get some gentle pungency from garlic spears/scapes; those work well with all of the other lightly cooked vegetables.

You're going to want a mild, gooey cheese for this pasta. We used Trader Joe's "burrata filling", otherwise known as strachiatella in Italy. Cresenza would also work brilliantly, as would a very mild tallegio, and quark would be pretty good. Chevre would work as well, but you'll want to add some additional pasta water for moisture.

Ready? Let's eat!

spring pasta with green vegetables

• 1lbs short twisty pasta
• 4-5 Tbs high-quality virgin olive oil
• 3-4 garlic spears or 6-8 garlic scapes
• 1-5 spring onions (depending on thickness, about 2/3 cup sliced)
• 1 small bunch asparagus, about 11oz
• 1 pint snap peas
• 1 small bunch fresh spearamint, about 1/2 cup chopped
• 1 small bunch Italian parsley, about 1/2 cup chopped
• 12oz mild gooey cheese (see above)
• Fresh grated parmigiano, 1-2oz
• Salt
• Fresh ground pepper
• Large pasta pot, spider or steaming basket, large serving bowl

Prep all the vegetables. Cut the garlic into 1/4" pieces, slice the spring onions thin, stem and snap the peas in half, and strip and mince the herbs. If the asparagus are skinny, cut them into 1" long pieces. If they are thick, slice them into 1/3" slices.

Bring a large pot full of well-salted water to a boil. Put the asparagus and garlic spears/scapes in the spider or basket, and blanche them for 2 minutes. Lift, shake off the water, and put in the bowl. Put the peas in the basket and blanche for 1 minute, and then do the same. Add the spring onions.

Add the pasta and cook according to the given timing. You want the pasta a bit beyond al dente, since it won't cook further, so check that it's done all the way through. As soon as the pasta is done, reserve 1 cup of pasta water, and drain the rest.

Put the still hot pasta into the bowl and cover it with dabs of the gooey cheese. Toss it with the vegetables in the bowl until the cheese evenly coats everything. Then add the chopped herbs and fresh ground pepper and toss again. Taste for salt, and add some if necessary. Finally, grade the parmigiano over the top. Serve warm or room temperature.

Enjoy, and happy spring!

Note: the pasta can be any short, curly/twisty variety. You can use telephone cord pasta like I did, or fusilli, casarecce, radiatore, or similar. It would also work pretty well with farfalle.

Unless you're Italian, you've probably never heard of agretti. This saltwort plant, also colorfully known as "friar's beard", is yet another one of those greens that you rarely see until you run into it at a farmer's market, then snap it up hoping you can find a recipe for it. It's a green, grassy herb, that tastes a little like seaweed and a little like celery and is quite delightful.

It's also harvested only in the spring, so hopefully you're reading this article after an internet search, because right now you can't get any more for the year. Sorry.

We discovered agretti when we were staying near the Campo di Fiori market in Rome; they had it there with a lot of vegetables we didn't recognize (including puntarelle, which maybe I'll write about later). We bought a large bunch and took it home to make an ad-hoc pasta dish using other ingredients we picked up. We've liked the result so much that every spring we buy some agretti and re-create it.

This is definitely a dish of few but exotic ingredients that you're only gonna find in a good gourmet market. In addition to the agretti, it requires trofie, a pasta made of little hand-rolled spindles of dough. While you could make it with some other pasta shape, the small size and chewy texture of the trofie really work with the crunchy brightness of the agretti. If you're really getting carried away, you can make your own.

Finally, there's the cheese, which needs to me some kind of soft but slightly funky cheese, such as taleggio, young pecorino or asiago, quadrello di bufala, or similar. The cheese definitely needs to be on the gooey/sticky side so that it melts into the pasta immediately, and you need some tang from it.

trofie con agretti

1 lbs / 500g trofie pasta
1 large or more small bunches of agretti; stripped leaves should total 2 cups
8-10oz soft tangy cheese (see above)
2-3 Tbs good olive oil
Salt
Pepper
4qt pot, very large pasta bowl, colander, heatproof cup

Fill a large pot with salted water and set it to boil for the pasta.

Strip the leaves from the agretti. We're not really cooking it, so you need to remove the little tubular leaves from any tough stems or roots. If the leaves and tender stems are long, cut them into 1-2" pieces. Put the pile of agretti leaves in the bottom of a large bowl, sufficiently large for vigorously tossing a pound of pasta in. Also get something for tossing it; I suggest salad tongs.

Remove any rind from the cheese and then divide it up into small pieces, like 1/2" cubes or blobs. Depending on the cheese, you may be able to do this with a wire or sharp knife, or you may need to pinch off blobs with your fingers.

When the water is boiling, put in the trofie. Don't do this too early; you want to have both the agretti and cheese prepped before the pasta comes out of the water. I have found that trofie actually needs to cook for a couple minutes longer than the time listed on the package. It never loses its chewiness, but it should taste fully cooked around 11-13 minutes.

When the pasta is done, dip out one cup of the pasta water (or capture it while draining), and drain the pasta. Immediately, before it can cool off at all, dump it on top of the agretti and add 1/4 cup of pasta water, Toss vigorously for around a minute, which should distribute the agretti and wilt it.

Add the cheese cubes/blobs, well distributed, and 2 Tbs olive oil. Toss some more, until the cheese melts. Add additional pasta water and olive oil as necessary until the cheese dissolves into a creamy sauce.

Season with a little salt and pepper. Serves four as a main dish, 6-8 as a first course.

So we're into the sixth week of isolation, and you've already mastered sourdough. What's next? Well, making your own cheese, of course!

While many cheeses like cheddar or brie require special aging environments, there's several cheeses that either require no aging at all, or can be aged in a household fridge. The obvious one to start with is ricotta, which is probably the easiest cheese there is and has the benefit of being worlds better fresh-made than from a store. But after you've done that, what's next?

Well, in Italy we were introduced to crescenza (aka stracchino), which is a very young, soft-curd cheese ideal for melting over pasta. Because it's a young cheese with a short shelf-life, it's really really hard to find for sale in the US. It also goes great with a lot of veggies that are in season right now, like asparagus, fiddleheads, and agretti. It doesn't require special cheese cultures you need to mail-order, and you can "age" it in the fridge. So let's make some!

The below is based on a recipe from Ricki Carroll's Home Cheesemaking, a book I heartily recommend to anyone interested in getting started with making cheese.

crescenza cheese

1 gallon of milk
1/4 tsp calcium chloride (if milk is pasteurized)
1 Tbs fine salt
2-3 oz live culture yogurt, Bulgarian or Russian style
1/8 tsp liquid rennet or 1/4 rennet tablet
non-chlorinated water
equipment: large pot, large spoon, long knife, instand-read thermometer, 2 cylindrical cheese molds (but see note), 2 cheese mats (but see note)

Slowly heat the milk up to 100F/38C. If using, dilute the calcium chloride in 1/4 cup water and add. Stir in the salt, then the yogurt. Cover and keep at 100F for 30-45 min.

Dilute the rennet in 1/4 cup water, and stir in for 30 seconds. Cover and let sit (keeping at 100F) for another 60 minutes, at which point the curd should give a clean break. Cut the curd into 3-inch cubes and let "heal" for 30 min. Cut the curds in quarters, and carefully and gently stir them around. Cover, let sit 5 minutes, and stir them again. Do this twice more.

The curds should sink; spoon off most of the whey from the top. Ladle the curds into the two molds, trying to distribute them evenly. Place the mat across the top of each mold and flip it over. Let them drain for an hour, then flip them back over, and then do this twice more (3 hours total). Finally, let the cheeses rest in the molds for at least 4 hours, ideally 8, and preferably in a room that's between 72F and 78F.

Remove the cheeses from the molds, carefully because they will be very delicate and soft. Put them on the mats in a big tupperware and put it in the fridge. Let age for 3-5 days, periodically taking them out and draining out any excess liquid.

Once you're ready, you can put the cheese on pasta, although it's equally good on bread.

Note: the yogurt really needs to be Bulgarian or Russian style, because those contain some different cultures (Y-1 yogurt culture) from other yogurts. On the West Coast, I recommend Pavel's brand.

Equipment Substitution: you can also use ricotta molds for this cheese. If you don't have cheese molds at all, get two empty 1qt yogurt tubs and punch a few 1/8" holes in them at different levels, four holes in the bottom and 12 holes around the outside. For cheese draining mats, you can use sushi rolling mats, or a relatively tight-mesh cooling rack, or basically anything that forms a tight mesh and can be sterilized.

pasta with crescenza, fiddleheads, and asparagus

1 lbs short, ruffly pasta (campanelle, farfalle, torchietti, garganelle, etc.)
12 oz cresenza cheese
10-12oz skinny asparagus, stemmed and cut into 2-inch pieces
8-12 oz fiddleheads
small bunch chives, minced, about 3 Tbs
salt
black pepper

Boil a 4-6qt pot full of salted water. Blanch the asparagus and fiddleheads, together, for about 2-3 minutes. Drain and put in a big bowl. Top with the chives and the crescenza cheese, diced small or pinched into small blobs.

Cook the pasta (you can use the same water from the blanching) until al dente. Drain, reserving 1 cup pasta water. While still very hot, toss the pasta with the cheese and veggies. Add pasta water as needed to make it creamy. Salt and pepper to your taste, and optionally drizzle with olive oil. Serves 4.

Note: you'll notice that this is essentially the same recipe as the taleggio pasta

Hag Pesach sameach! Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday, because it has the most and the best foods. I adore matzoh ball soup, I love the horseradish and the beets and the parsley, matzoh brie is delicious, I even like gefilte fish (but seldom eat it because nobody else does). However, I don't like traditonal Ashkenaz haroset, at all. There's something about out-of-season apples and walnuts cooked in sweet red wine that's unappealing, even more so if the cook adds raisins.

Sephardic harosets, however, are made with a more appetizing selection of dried fruits and nuts. So I was thinking about making one when we went to our local middle eastern market (La Bouffe) and found that they had green almonds in stock. (tip: your local tiny ethnic market is probably safer than the supermarket right now)

Green almonds are the immature fruit that will become almonds in the fall, an when you look at their fuzzy green flesh you can see how almonds are related to peaches and nectarines. Depending on how mature they are, you either eat the whole fruit, or the kernel in the center, which is the part that will become the almond nut. The flesh is tart and firm, and the kernel tastes mildly almondy with no bitterness.

I realize that green almonds are not an ingredient everyone can get, but if you can grab some from your local farmer's market or middle eastern grocery, Passover-time is exactly when they'll be in season. And then you can make this delicious haroset.

Green Almond & Date Haroset

1 lbs green almonds
12-16 dates, around 1/2 lbs
2 mandarin oranges
2/3 cup mild red wine
2 cinnamon sticks
4 whole cloves

Pit the dates and dice them fine. Put the date pieces, cinnamon sticks, and cloves in a small saucepan. Pour over the red wine, and press down so that all date pieces are wet.

Put on the stove and simmer over low heat until almost all the wine is either absorbed or boiled off, 5-10 min. Set aside to cool.

While the dates are cooking, prep the almonds and oranges. Separate the almonds into two equal piles, one having the smaller/younger almonds, the other having the older/bigger almonds. Stem the smaller almonds, and chop them fine, both green fruit and inner nut. Split the bigger almonds, extract just the kernel (nut), and roughly chop.

Peel the mandarin oranges, separate them into sections, and cut each section into 4-5 pieces.

Remove the cinnamon sticks from the dates. Put everything in a bowl and mix together. Set aside for at least 30 minutes for flavors to meld (or overnight in the fridge).

Here's a simple, unusual, and surprisingly healthful appetizer you can really only make this time of year. It depends on finding really fresh, young spring carrots, the kind which are only 5" to 7" long and 1/2" in diameter, and very sweet. And you'll probably have to grow them yourself or get them from your local farmers' market (I went to the PSU farmers' market), because you need them to have nice, fresh, dry, carrot tops because you're going to eat those carrot tops. Yes, really. You'll even like them.

Anyway, don't try this with supermarket carrots, you'll just taste the bitterness of regret and wilted carrot tops. Taste the carrot top leaves. They should taste grassy, not bitter, kind of like Italian parsley.

This recipe is the "carrot reunion" because we'll be making a "pesto" from the carrot tops and then serving it with the carrots. Note that the pesto is actually a brighter, more attractive green than it looks in the picture.

Here's the recipe, roughly. Do use your judgement here. Particularly, green garlic can vary a lot in size and strength, so don't use so much it overwhelms everything else.

Spring Carrot Reunion

2 bunches of freshly picked young spring carrots, with greens
2 slices stale white bread
1-4 stalks green garlic, depending on size/strength
1 oz (1/4 cup) pecorino romano cheese
1/3 cup olive oil, plus more
2 Tbs fresh lemon juice (from 1-2 lemons)
salt
ground pepper
water
food processor, Vitamix, or food grinder

Separate the tops from the carrots, and wash and dry both carrots and tops.

Roughly chop the green garlic. Dampen the bread and tear it into small pieces (should be around 2/3 cup). Dice or crumble the romano. Put all of these in the food processor. Roughly chop the carrot tops and put them on top. Pour the 1/3 cup olive oil over them, followed by 1/4 water. Add around 1/4 tsp salt and the same amount freshly ground pepper. Add the lemon juice.

Puree the mixture. If it's too dry to puree, add more olive oil and water, 1 Tbs each at a time until the blade moves smoothly and can create a smooth puree. Taste, add salt or lemon juice if you feel it needs more of either.

Put the carrot top "pesto" in a bowl, and serve with the young carrots for dipping.