It’s been a while since we posted… it’s a long story… it might be a while before we post again, but we had to get this up because it is fantastic. Perhaps May doesn’t seem like the month for roasted birds, but with the May we’ve been having here, roast bird felt right. We’ve roasted our share of chickens over the past few years, with good results.  Always satisfying on a cold day, always nostalgic, but never has one knocked our socks off and made our eyes pop until this one. In fact, we dubbed it recipe of the year for 2010. I know, it’s 2011.

The first time we made this dish, I swore it was one of the best things I’d ever eaten, but I thought it was a fluke. (From time to time you hear famous eaters say that roast chicken is the perfect dish, final meal kind of fantastic. I always thought either they were exaggerating or they were lying. Now I don’t think either of those things).  We did it again, exactly as we did the first time, just to see.  Same thing. Better than any roast bird either of us has ever had, restaurants included.

By some mixture of science and magic, brining a bird renders it tender, juicy, and super tasty. We are writing down directions for preparing this chicken and bread salad exactly as we did and all I can say is that it has worked perfectly twice now in our hands and so I am very hopeful that it will in any kitchen.  We’ve been on a big Zuni Cafe Cookbook kick recently, and a lot of this recipe was pulled from there.  We made a few changes though, and they seemed to work so well that I’d encourage everyone else to too, even if you have the Zuni book. For those of you who tend to use recipes more as a guide than as a strict set of directions (Melanie, I’m talking to you), try making this one by the book at least once before veering off. We also have converted the recipe for a half-chicken, which is better suited to dinner for two.

Bread Salad with Pan Roasted Chicken

Adapted from The Zuni Cafe Cookbook

For the Brine

• 2.5 lemons, halved
• 12 bay leaves
• ~2 oz flat leaf parsley
• small bunch of thyme
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 head of garlic
• 1/4 cup peppercorns
• 1 cup kosher salt, preferably diamond crystal
• 1 gallon water

For the chicken

• One half chicken,
• 4 sprigs fresh thyme
• Salt
• freshly cracked black pepper

For the salad

• Generous 8 ounces slightly stale open-crumbed, chewy, peasant-style bread
• 6 to 8 tablespoons mild-tasting olive oil
• 1-1/2 tablespoons Champagne vinegar or white wine vinegar
• Salt and freshly cracked black pepper
• 1 tablespoon dried currants
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar, or as needed
• 1 tablespoon warm water
• 2 tablespoons pine nuts
• 2 to 3 garlic cloves, slivered
• 1/4 cup slivered scallions (about 4 scallions), including a little of the green part
• 2 tablespoons lightly salted Chicken Stock or lightly salted water
• A few handfuls of arugula, frisée, or red mustard greens, carefully washed and dried

Brine the chicken: Split a whole chicken into 2 equal halves down the breastbone. combine all ingredients in large pot, cover and bring to boil. boil 1 minute, stir to dissolve salt. remove from the heat and cool completely, then chill before using. brine can be refrigerated for up to 3 days.

Roast the chicken: Preheat oven to 450˚F. Season the chicken with salt and pepper. Tuck thyme underneath the skin all over the bird. If you’re feeling decadent, smear some soft butter underneath the skin on the meat of the chicken as well. Heat oven in a heavy oven proof skillet until it moves easily across the pan. Place the chicken, skin side down in the skillet and brown, about 5 minutes. Turn the bird over and place the skillet in the oven. Cook for about 15 minutes, looking for the chicken to start sizzling and continue browning. After about 10 minutes, baste the chicken by spooning the fat and juice in the pan over the top of the bird every few minutes. After about 15 minutes in the oven, turn the chicken again and continue basting the other side for about 10 minutes. Turn the bird back over one more time to re-crisp the breast side, continuing with the periodic basting. Total time will vary depending on the size of the chicken and the heat of the oven. The temperature of the breast meat should read about 165˚F when you remove the chicken from the oven (the temperature will continue to rise as the bird rests.

Start the bread salad (can be done a few hours ahead):
Preheat the broiler. Cut the bread into large chunks, carving off all of the bottom crust and most of the top and side crust. Brush the bread all over with olive oil or toss bread chunks with olive oil in a large bowl. Broil very briefly, until crisp and lightly colored. Keep a close watch as bread can burn very quickly under the broiler. Turn over and crisped the other side until light brown. Remove from the oven and trim off any badly charred bits, then tear the bread into irregular chunks about 1 to 3 inches large.

Combine 1/4 cup of the olive oil with the Champagne or white whine vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Toss about 1/4 cup of this vinaigrette with the torn bread in a wide bowl; don’t worry if the bread is unevenly dressed. Taste a coated piece of bread and season with salt and pepper if needed. Moisten the currents in a small bowl with the red wine vinegar and warm water. Set aside.

Assemble the salad:
While the chicken is roasting, place the pine nuts in a small baking dish and set in the hot oven for a minute or two, just to warm through (they’ll burn quickly). Add them to the bowl of dressed bread.
Put a dollop of olive oil in a small skillet and cook the garlic and scallions over medium-low heat, stirring, until softened but not colored. Add the garlic and scallions to the bread mixture and fold to combine. Drain the currants and fold in. Dribble the chicken stock over the salad and fold again. Taste another piece of bread and season with salt and pepper, or a few drops of vinegar, and toss well.
Pile the bread salad in a 1-quart baking dish and tent with foil; set the bowl aside. Place the salad in the oven when the chicken has about 5 to 10 minutes remaining.

Finishing:
Remove the chicken from the oven and turn off the heat. Leave the bread salad to continue warming for another 5 minutes or so.
Lift the chicken from the pan and set on a plate. Carefully pour the clear fat from the roasting pan, leaving the lean drippings behind, or use a fat-separating measuring cup. Add about a tablespoon of water to the hot pan and swirl it to release any browned bits.
Slash the taught skin between the thighs and breast of the bird and tilt the chicken and plate over the roasting pan to drain the juice into the drippings.
Set the chicken in a warm spot, tent with foil and allow to rest for 5 minutes while you finish the bread salad.

Set a platter in the oven to warm for a minute or two.
Tilt the roasting pan and skim the last of the fat. Place over medium-low heat, add any juice that has collected under the chicken, and bring to a simmer. Stir and scrape to soften any hard golden drippings. Taste-the juices will be extremely flavorful.
Tip the bread salad into the salad bowl. It will be steamy-hot, a mixture of soft, moist wads, crispy-on-the-outside-but-moist-in-the-middle-wads, and a few downright crispy ones. Drizzle and toss with a spoonful of the pan juices. Add the greens, a drizzle of vinaigrette, and fold well. Taste again.

Cut the chicken into large pieces including the skin, spread the bread salad on the warm platter, and nestle the chicken in the salad.

Serves 2-3

This was the center piece of our wedding feast. For our particular wedding feast, we needed a dish that we could either A) make in advance or that B) we could make once we got to the island (as previously mentioned, said island has limited electricity and limited gas stove space, thus limiting our options a bit in terms of cooking. Also, we were hosting a wedding, which sort of limited the time we could spend cooking). Furthermore, the wedding was in July, so the dish needed to be, C) appropriate to eat in July. A braise might not normally be the first dish that pops into your mind as summer fare, but this braise, developed in Mexico, a region known to be hotter than Seattle, seemed to fit the bill exactly. It’s called Tinga Poblana (Pork with Smokey Tomatoe Sauce, Potatoes and Avocado). It comes from one of our favorite books, Rick Bayless’ Authentic Mexican.

When we first tested it on a smaller group of about 15, each of the 15 gave it rave reviews. It was fantastic. Spicy enough to make it interesting, chunky enough to make it hearty, and topped with onions, queso fresco, and avocado, which have the effect of lightening the dish and making a hearty stew somehow seem “fresh”.

For the wedding, we made it on the houseboat before leaving for the San Juans, on the the Thursday before the Saturday wedding. It got to sit in the fridge for a day and a half before being served, which only helped it. After the ceremony, Talley and his dad ran straight up to the kitchen, dumped the Tinga into huge pots and got it reheating over a big fire. Piece of (wedding) cake.

Joe Lambert/Talley's dad dumps tinga into the pot to warm it up for the feast.
Photo by Shealah Craighead

Smoky Pork Tinga Poblana

Adapted from Authentic Mexican

• 1 lb lean, boneless pork shoulder, trimmed and cut into 1½ inch pieces (free-range)
• ½ tsp mixed dried herbs (such as marjoram and thyme)
• 3 bay leaves
• 2 medium boiling potatoes, quartered
• 1½ lb ripe tomatoes OR one 28-ounce can of tomatoes
• 4 oz chorizo sausage, removed from casing
• 1 Tbsp vegetable oil or lard
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• ½ tsp dried oregano
• 2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, seeded and thinly sliced
• 4 tsp of adobo sauce from the can
• Salt to taste, about ½ tsp
• Sugar to taste, about ½ tsp

For garnish:

• 1 ripe avocado, peeled, pitted, and sliced
• 4 oz queso fresco or other fresh cheese, cut into 8 fingers
• a slice of fresh onion, broken into rings

Bring 1 quart of salted water to a boil and add the pork. Skim the foam that rises to the top in the first couple minutes, then add the herbs and the bay leaves. Reduce heat and simmer until the meat is tender, about 1 to 1½ hours. Remove the meat from the pot, then strain the broth and reserve 1 cup. When the meat is cool enough, dry it and cut it into 3/4 inch pieces.

While the meat is cooking, boil the potatoes in salted water until just tender, approimately 12-15 minutes (you will cook them a bit more later, so don’t overdo it). Drain, then cut into 1/2 inch pieces. Seed the tomatoes then chop into ½ pieces. Fry the chorizo in the oil on medium until done, about 10 minutes, breaking up any clumps as it cooks. Remove the chorizo, retaining the fat in the pan.

Raise the heat to medium high and add the pork to the pan, cook for about 5 to 7 minutes, until the pork is nicely browned on the outside, then remove it from the pan. Add the onion and fry, stirring frequently until well browned, about 10 minutes. Stir in the garlic and cook a minute or two.

Add the chopped tomatoes, oregano, chorizo and return the pork to the pan. Mix well, and simmer for 5 minutes. Stir in the potatoes, the reserved cup of broth, the chipotle peppers, and the adobo sauce. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer gently for approximately 10 minutes to blend the flavors.

When ready to serve, scoop the tinga into a dish and decorate with alternating slices of avocado and the fingers of cheese. Add a couple onion rings to the top and serve with crusty bread or warm tortillas.

Serves 4

For the wedding, we wanted both a red and a white sangria — this is what we wound up going with for the red.  We tested a couple recipes; this rose to the top because it’s not too sweet, it’s nicely tart, and it’s extremely refreshing. The original recipe (from Saveur, who, in turn, lifted the recipe from the Junior League of Houston Book Club, circa 1970… kind of neat) recommends adding the fruit just before serving, which is probably fine, but for our purposes wasn’t practical, so when we tested it, we added the fruit fully 30 hours in advance (made transporting it to the wedding WAY easier).  The results were great, though I say it myself — who ever minded boozy fruit in their glass anyway? Welcome Fall!

Red Sangria

• ¾ cup sugar
• 1 750-ml bottle light red wine, like pinot noir
• ¼ cup brandy or cognac
• ¼ cup fresh orange juice
• ¼ cup fresh lemon juice
• ¼ cup fresh lime juice
• 1 cup fresh pineapple chunks
• 4 thin slices each of orange, lemon, and lime
• 1 fresh peach, pitted and sliced
• 1 cup ginger ale

Bring sugar and 1 cup water to a boil in a 1-qt. saucepan. Let cool and transfer to a pitcher; add wine, brandy, and citrus juices. Chill.
Anytime before serving, add pineapple, citrus slices, and peaches. Add ginger ale just before serving. Stir and serve over ice, including chunks of fruit in each pour.

Photo by Shealah Craighead

This recipe is adapted from one we found on Food & Wine, it was by a guy named Adam Seger. The original recipe has you strain all the fruit out of the sangria before serving and then chop up fresh fruit to add back as a garnish. It also has you rim glasses with a cinnamon sugar mixture. When we tested the recipe, we included this step, and we strained the fruit out before pouring it into the glass. The result was elegant and addictive, everybody thought it was a fancy cocktail rather than sangria. For the wedding though, we ditched that step, left in the boozey fruit and just served it in a big bowl. Depending on your needs, both methods yield very good results.

Photo by Shealah Craighead

White Sangria with Apples and Pisco

• 1 750-ml bottle dry white wine, such as Chardonnay (but avoid over-oaked wines)
• 1 apple
• ⅓ cup peach schnapps
• ¼ cup Pisco (we also tried it with grappa with good results)
• ¼ cup honey
• 1 orange, quartered
• 1 lemon, quartered
• 1 lime, quartered
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 4 quarter-size slices of fresh ginger
• 3 cloves
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• ice
• club soda

Peel, core and chop the apples. In a bowl, combine the wine, schnapps, Pisco and honey. Add the quartered orange, the lemon, lime, cinnamon sticks, the chopped apple, ginger and cloves and refrigerate at least 4 hours.

At this point, you can either do what we did at the wedding and just add some club soda and serve it as is, or you can fancy it up a bit: on a small plate, blend 2 tablespoons sugar and a half teaspoon sugar and cinnamon. Moisten the rims of wine glasses or cocktail glasses and dip in the cinnamon sugar to coat. Strain the fruit from the sangria, fill the glass ¾ full with sangria, top with club soda and add some freshly chopped apple and orange as a garnish.

Since last we posted (almost 3 months ago…), we’ve gotten married, Talley got a PhD, we’ve moved off the houseboat and across the state and I’ve started vet school. The name Houseboat Eats is now fraudulent, but we’re going to keep it anyway, for old time’s sake.

Our first order of business now that things have stabilized a bit is to post wedding recipes. It’ll take a little while to get everything up, but it’ll probably all go up eventually. The most requested recipes after the wedding (actually, the only requested recipes) were the sangria recipes, so we’ll start there. A white sangria and a red. Then, in no particular order, we’ll post the recipes for our:

• chicken liver pate
• asparagus pickles
• lavender ginger soda and the rosemary lemon soda
• farro/lentil/squash salad
• pork tinga
• jicama salad

My aunts Margaret and Becky and our friend Kate made no fewer than 18 fruit pies for the event, and we’ll try to get some of those up too.

The wedding took place on a small island up in the San Juans (up by Canada) that had almost no electricity, refrigeration, or any of the other amenities that we have come to depend on in our kitchen. But we did have a gas stove, a fire pit, and a lot of coolers. Theoretically, Talley and I were going to make all of the food for the wedding (Talley and I and a crew of 8 family members, to be fair), but when it came down to the day of the feast, we were overwhelmed, despite all of our planning and prep work. The morning of the wedding, our friends and family stepped up and spent all morning helping – they cleaned, chopped, and baked 15 delicata squash, they peeled and shoestringed 20 pounds of green apples and jicama, they sliced 25 avocados, cut 15 pounds of cheese… the list goes on — all of this without the benefit of electricity or decent knives (well, most did it without good knives – the apparently psychic jicama salad group actually brought their own sharp knives…).

So, none of the wedding recipes are very fussy or fancy because they had to either be made ahead of time and transported or be easy enough that they would come together the morning of, but they’re all really pretty good, particularly the tinga if you ask me, and we are certainly sentimentally attached to them all now.

Lastly, we just want to say thanks again to everyone who made the occasion so perfect and so memorable.

Stay tuned for the first recipe: White sangria with apples, citrus fruit and pisco. Make it and be happy!

Susan G Purdy is the author of one of my first and favorite baking books, The Family Baker. Since acquiring the book some 10 or 11 years ago, I have tried dozens of the recipes and to a one, they have all been great. None are complicated or fussy, they’re all just really good. Following in my aunt Margaret’s footsteps, I always write in my cookbooks the date at which I first tried the recipe and my opinions of the outcome. This black and white chocolate pudding cake (which I have made a million times since) I first made in 2000, and the comment at the top was, “Holy Sh!t, yum.”

Talley describes this cake as the perfect cake/gooey brownie. It’s incredibly low tech, no electronic equipment needed – all you need is a wooden spoon and a bowl. You’ll make a thick batter, spread it into a pan, pour on some dry sugar and cocoa, then pour on what seems like too much boiling water, and then stick the whole thing in the oven. What emerges 20 or 30 minutes later is a rich, gooey, chewy, chocolatey mass dripping with its own syrup. You’ll want to add ice cream.

Black and White Chocolate Pudding Cake

adapted from The Family Baker

• butter for preparing pan
• 1 cup unsifted all-purpose flour
• 1⅓ cups granulated sugar, divided (⅔ cup and ⅔ cup)
• ½ cup sifted unsweetened cocoa, preferably dutch-processed, divided (¼ cup and ¼ cup)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• pinch of ground cinnamon
• ¼ tsp salt
• ½ cup milk
• ¼ cup canola or other mild vegetable oil
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• ½-⅔ cup white chocolate, very coarsely chopped (I chop mine into ½ inch squares, or semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup boiling water

Position a rack in the center of the oven and preheat to 350˚F. Butter a 9″x9″ baking pan and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, ⅔ cup of sugar, ¼ cup of cocoa, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Stir to blend, then mix in the milk, oil, vanilla, and white chocolate. The batter will feel quite stiff. Spread it in the baking pan.

In a small bowl, stir together the remaining ¼ cup cocoa with the remaining ⅔ cup sugar. Spread this evenly over the batter in the pan and pour the boiling water on top. DO NOT STIR.

Bake the cake 25 to 30 minutes, or until the top looks crisp and crackled and a cake tester inserted in a cakey area comes out clean. Cool the cake a few minutes, then serve warm, spooned directly from the pan. Top with vanilla ice cream or unsweetened heavy cream.

The next day, the cake will have reabsorbed a the syrupy liquid and will be more like a brownie – it’s still quite good.

Serves 4 normal people, or 1 very greedy person with a sweet tooth

Beryl and I have learned a little bit about goat meat in the last couple years. First, we got some goat at the farmers market and we learned we absolutely loved goat meat: we found it had a slightly more complex flavor than beef, without being too “gamey” like mutton (a flavor we have both struggled with). Encouraged, we ordered goat curry at a restaurant and found that goat could be just as gamey and (in our opinions at the time) nasty as muttony lamb can be. Conflicted, we asked the friendly goat vendor (Terry from Quilceda Farms) at the Ballard market why his goat was delicious and other goat was gamey.  From what I can recall (and blame us, not him, if we get this wrong), the flavor of goat is strongly affected both by the age of the goat and by their diet, especially in the weeks before they are slaughtered.  An older goat who is finished entirely on grass will have a gamier flavor than a young goat that is finished on grain. All the goat we’ve bought from both Quilceda Farms as well as Toboton Creek Ranch has been delicious and complex without being overly gamey.

The following braise is a dish I made up to use a lovely piece of goat we got from Toboton Creek. I’m not sure exactly what cut it was, they called it “boneless rolled roast”, but I think it was shoulder. If it wasn’t, shoulder would certainly work fine here as well. One nice thing about the rolled roast we bought was the layers of fat rolled into the middle that kept the inside moist as it cooked.

There’s nothing particularly tricky about this recipe, but the secret is definitely in the veal stock in the sauce. A sauce made with veal stock and then reduced will have a texture like no other: perfectly gelatinous, flavorful but mild enough to let other flavors shine through, and rich. If you haven’t used veal stock in your home cooking, I implore you to give it a shot. Make some calls, find out where you can buy veal bones (you can buy them pretty cheap at the Ballard market from Quilceda Farms). Follow Michael Ruhlman’s recipe. I guarantee it will be one of those things that will change your outlook on things.

Braised Goat Shoulder

• 1½ lb goat
• kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1-2 tsp sweet smoked paprika (pimenton de la vera dulce)
• canola oil
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cloves of garlic, chopped
• 3 stalks of celery, diced
• 2 large or 3 small carrots, diced
• ½ cup dry white wine
• 2 Tbsp sherry vinegar, or white wine vinegar
• 1½ cups chicken stock
• 1½ cups veal stock
• 1 Tbsp unsalted butter

1-2 hours before cooking, sprinkle the goat liberally with salt, pepper, and a light (but thorough) dusting of sweet (dulce) smoked paprika. Place on a plate in the fridge. Remove the goat from the fridge about 30 minutes before cooking, dust lightly with flour and pat off the excess.

Preheat oven to 250˚F

Heat oil in a large dutch oven over medium-high until hot. Brown the goat generously on all sides until very brown (never skimp on the browning) and remove from the pan.

Add the onion, garlic, celery, and carrots to the pan and sweat the vegetables on medium-low for about 5 minutes. Add white wine and sherry vinegar and cook for 3 minutes. Add chicken stock and veal stock, return goat to pan, bring almost to a boil (but don’t let it boil.)

Cut out a circular piece of parchment paper just large enough to cover the meat and it’s cooking liquid and place it on the braise, put in the oven. You can also just put a lid loosely on the top, but the goal here is to prevent the braise from ever coming to a boil in the oven. If you cover it tightly with a lid, the internal temperature will easily get above boiling, but using parchment paper or keeping the pot partially uncovered will allow transfer of heat out of the pot and prevent it from coming to a boil. Still, it always helps to check and make sure the braise isn’t boiling from time to time. Turn every hour or so. Check after 3 hours… the goat may not (and probably will not) be tender, turn and return to the oven for another 30 to 90 minutes, checking every 45 minutes or so until very tender.

When tender, remove the meat from braise and cover with foil in a warm place. Strain the sauce into a sauce pan and reduce the sauce on medium high heat until just beginning to thicken. You should end up with roughly ½ cup of liquid. Add a pinch of salt to taste. When pleased with the consistency of the sauce, (it should be pretty thick and definitely coat the back of a spoon) remove from heat and whisk in the butter.

When ready to serve, slice the goat and fan the slices on a pre-warmed plate. Spoon the sauce over the meat.

Serves 3 to 4

Asparagus is finally here.  

This is very good news.  It’s good news for a number of reasons and this dish is one of them.  Talley found it a few years ago on 101 Cookbooks when we were in a hurry for something filling, healthy and quick.  Now it’s a recipe that we go to regularly, along with many of Heidi Swanson’s creations. The tahini dressing is simple and great; we’ll often make it alone as a dip for carrots and other vegetables.  Melanie and Trillium: you should make this, you’d like it.  I don’t know why I’m writing this since I know neither one of you knows about the internet.

We encourage you to check out the recipe at 101Cookbooks, but we provide it here as well for simplicity (with very slight changes, as we make it).

Asparagus and Chickpeas, with Brown Rice and Tahini

from the inimitable 101 Cookbooks

• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 14-ounce cans of chickpeas, drained
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• 1 bunch asparagus, cut into 1-inch segments
• 3 cups cooked brown rice
• 1 cup almond slivers, toasted
• fine grain sea salt

Tahini Dressing:

• 1 garlic clove, smashed and chopped
• 1/4 cup tahini
• zest of one lemon
• scant 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 tablespoons hot water
• scant 1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt

First, get your rice going. Also, preheat your oven to 450 for your almonds. For brown rice, use a ratio of about 1.5-2 cups water to 1 cup rice for brown rice. Bring rice and water to a boil uncovered, then cover and reduce heat and let simmer for 45 minutes. Turn off heat and let rice sit in the covered pot for another 10 minutes (or just follow package instructions). Remove lid and fluff rice.

Make the dressing: whisk together the garlic, tahini, lemon zest and juice, and olive oil. (I do this whole process in my 1 cup liquid measuring cup – only dirties one dish!). Add the hot water to thin a bit and then the salt. Set aside.

Add a few tablespoons of olive oil to a big skillet over medium-high heat and swirl to coat the pan, then add the chickpeas and pinch of salt. Let the beans sauté for a couple minutes, stirring minimally, to get nice and crusty. This step usually takes about 7-9 minutes for us.

Meanwhile, put your almonds on a pan and roast them in a 450 degree oven for 5-6 minutes – check them after a few minutes – it takes about 30 seconds for almonds to go from perfect golden brown to ugly, blackish burned.

Now add the garlic and onions to your chickpeas and stir. Let this cook for a few minutes. Stir in the asparagus with another pinch or two of salt, cover with a lid for a minute or two to steam–just until the asparagus brightens and softens up just a bit.

Uncover and stir in the rice and almond slivers, reserving a few almonds for garnish. Taste and add more salt if needed (likely).

Serve in a big bowl drizzled with a few tablespoons of the tahini dressing, but have the rest of the dressing on hand so each person can add more to his or her taste.

Serves 4 to 6

In our yard, the first edible plant plant to emerge in the spring is our neighbor’s rhubarb. It’s ready to go before the asparagus, before the baby lettuces, and, since our neighbor seems to condone it, we happily avail ourselves of the resource (Gwen, next time we see you we’re going to greet you with this drink). But what do you do when you have a glut of gorgeous rhubarb and no strawberries to speak of? Rhubarb cocktails!

Rhubarb has a biting sourness and a great tannic mouthfeel that makes it a perfect substitute for citrus in cocktails, and yet, it’s surprisingly rare ingredient on your average cocktail list. The following cocktail nicely captures the essence of rhubarb, with its distinctive flavor and slight bitterness. The rhubarb is used to make a light syrup that could really be incorporated into a variety of drinks. Here it’s mixed with gin and Aperol, which is an Italian aperitif that also lists rhubarb among it’s multiple ingredients. If you can’t find Aperol, you should still make this syrup and mix it with your spirits, but the Aperol provides a bitterness and a balance that makes this drink one of my new spring-time favorites.

As a side note, were you aware that rhubarb is legally classified in the US as a fruit? It’s true! Even though it’s technically a vegetable, a US Customs Court ruled in 1947 that since rhubarb was mainly used as a “fruit” it would be classified as such. This effectively allowed rhubarb to be imported with a lower tariff than if it were classified a vegetable.

The Rhubarberol Cocktail

Light rhubarb syrup

• a bunch of rhubarb stalks (depending on how much syrup you want to end up with), cut into chunks
• light simple syrup to cover (2 parts water to 1 part sugar, heated until dissolved)

Pack the rhubarb into a saucepan and barely cover with simple syrup, you want this to be as intensely flavored as possible. Simmer on low until the rhubarb is falling apart, about 15 to 20 minutes. Strain through cheesecloth into a jar and store in the fridge until ready to use. This syrup will keep for a few weeks in the fridge.

The Rhubarberol

• 1 small stalk fresh rhubarb (about 25 grams)
• 2 oz gin (use a gin that’s not too strong on the juniper here. I like DH Krahn for this drink, and New Amsterdam would work well here as well… unlike most other gin drinks if you ask me).
• 1½ oz rhubarb syrup
• ½ Aperol
• 1 or 2 dashes Fee’s Orange Bitters (optional: other orange bitters such as Regan’s might be a bit too strong for this drink)

Muddle the fresh rhubarb stalk in a cocktail shaker. Add the gin, rhubarb syrup, Aperol, and a dash or two of orange bitters. Add ice and stir until chilled. Pour into a cocktail glass and garnish with a very thinly sliced twist of rhubarb stalk (I used a sharp knife, but a mandolin or a vegetable peeler might work as well).

One of our favorite parts of cooking is using vegetables that we grow. On the houseboat, garden space is obviously limited, but we have a couple big boxes on the back porch that my dad made us, a ton of big pots, and some space in a raised bed in the lawn off the dock. Vegetable gardens are extremely rewarding, and I’m writing to encourage everyone to try it on whatever scale they can manage. If you live in the northwest, it’s time to start now. My friend Nick Guilford owns and runs Sunseed Farm with his partner, Yarrow, and their new baby. They grow tons of organic berries (the farm opens up to U-pick berry picking later in the season) and vegetables that they sell at the Bellingham farmer’s market all summer. But in the spring, Nick heads south to Seattle with a truck loaded with organic vegetable starts. I worked at his Farmer’s market booth last year, and filled my garden with Sunseed veggie starts, and my little garden pumped out more lettuce, kale, sorrel, cabbage, collards, kohlrabi, tomato, pepper, eggplant, basil, zucchini and herbs than I ever thought it could. Starting next Sunday (April 4th), Nick is going to be at the West Seattle Farmer’s Market and I’m going to be manning the Sunseed booth at the Ballard Farmer’s Market.

Here are some pictures from my little garden last year with all its Sunseed starts:

Here are some shots from Sunseed Farm:

Anyway, this is all to say, I hope that you have started planning your spring veg, and if you are in the Seattle area, I hope you come say hi to me at the Ballard farmers market or to Nick at the West Seattle farmers market. We’ll be posting our favorite ways to prepare some of the lesser known veg that grace the Sunseed shelves, like chocolate mint and sorrel, throughout the season. Here are a couple of my favorite gardening places to go online: Sunseed Learning Center; Diggin Food.   Happy planting!