There are a lot of reasons to love spring - the warmer weather, stuff starting to bloom. As you could probably guess, we especially like the early fresh crops of greens that spring produces. Our garden plot is small, but super productive. This year, we planted a few early crops of greens - two kinds of kales, green leaf lettuce, arugula, broccoli, and peas. Most of these were planted as seeds in March, so by now they're ready to pick. What's amazing about these early crops is that they grow so dang fast! The other day, we went out there and found that our lettuce and arugula had exploded, so we decided to harvest some of it. This little box of vegetables yielded enough salad greens for the whole week!
We usually do our garden shopping at Allandale Farm - a great little local place and Boston's only working local farm. Allandale not only has great starter plants - we bought about 15 different varieties of tomato plants - they also have a small, but gorgeous produce section featuring fruits and vegetables from their own land. We saw fiddleheads and asparagus and just had to have them.
What I love about these beauties is that they don't need much to shine. Here's a quick recipe for a simple, healthy, fresh-tasting meal we recently made.
SAUTEED SPRING GREENS WITH FRESH PASTA AND SHAVED PARMESAN
1/2 lb of fiddleheads
1 bunch of asparagus
1 lb of fresh pasta
1-2 tablespoons of high quality olive oil
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
2-3 cloves of garlic
1-2 links of cooked chicken sausage (optional)
1/4 cup of high quality shaved parmesan
Thoroughly wash and scrub fiddleheads and snip off their ends. Chop ends of asparagus and cut into bite-sized pieces. Sautee asparagus and fiddleheads with garlic and olive oil for 5-7 minutes. Toss with fresh pasta, salt, pepper, lemon juice, and shaved parmesan. Drizzle with olive oil to taste.
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