Early Spring Salad with Orange Dressing

We’re still seeing late season citrus in our local grocery store and we love to add that late citrus to spring veggies that are in season here in the Pacific Northwest. Delicious asparagus, spring peas, and purple radishes with freshly picked greens. We didn’t include amounts of asparagus feel free to use as much or as little as you have or as you want to eat. We use the crispy fava beans as protein in this salad, however if you don’t have them boiled eggs or fried tofu would both be good substitutes.

Time: 40 minutes

Ingredients

For the Salad:

Leafy Greens - early spring options include arugula, mustard greens, baby chard, spinach, radicchio, and pea greens

Asparagus

Radishes

Snow peas

Crispy Spring Onions

Good Bean Sea Salt Crispy Favas and Peas

For the Dressing:

1/2 cup orange Juice

1 tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp mustard

salt and pepper to taste

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Move an oven rack to the top shelf in your oven, and turn the oven to the broil setting. Rinse and cut the ends off of your asparagus. Toss in olive oil, salt, and pepper. Layer the asparagus in a single layer on a cookie sheet and broil for 5 minutes. Flip the asparagus and broil for 5 minutes on the other side. The asparagus is easy to burn on the broil setting, so we recommend using a timer and watching them closely. Remove from oven and make the crispy spring onions.

Chop the remaining vegetables and cut or tear the salad greens (if you want to). Put all of the salad dressing ingredients into a jar with a lid and shake until it’s emulsified/fully combined. Add salt and pepper to taste. Add all the salad ingredients to a bowl (except the spring onions). Toss with salad dressing. Top with spring onions and enjoy!

Polenta veggie bowl

We are fully loving spring and asparagus season. We are sharing a spring veggie polenta recipe with you today. We used broccoli greens instead of swiss chard this time because we had a lot from our spring broccoli harvest.

Serves: 2-4

Time: 1 1/2hrs

Ingredients

1 batch basic polenta

1 batch of shittake bacon

olive oil

salt and pepper

1 bulb fennel

1 bunch asparagus

1 tbsp lemon juice

1 red onion

1 small head of broccoli

1 bunch of swiss chard (feel free to substitute other spring greens)

2 cloves garlic

2 tbsp aged balsamic vinegar

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Preheat the oven to 375 F. Begin to make the basic polenta and shiitake bacon.

Cut the fennel into slices and the broccoli into florets. Toss them with olive oil and spread on a lined baking sheet. Salt. Roast in the oven about 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. Slice the onion and saute until caremilzed. Mince the garlic and cut the chard into thin strips. Fry the garlic until fragrant, no longer than 2 minutes, add the chard and salt to taste. Saute until wilted. If you have multiple frying pans these steps can be done simultaneously.

Set the oven to broil. Trim the ends off the asparagus and put on a baking sheet with olive oil and salt. Broil for 7 minutes, flip, and broil for another 7 minutes. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with lemon juice.

To assemble, place polenta in a bowl and then add a bit of each element. Finish with a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and enjoy!

Chickpea Crepe with Broiled Asparagus

Many cultures worldwide have a pancake or crepe traditionally made with bean flour.  In Northern India there is the chilla, in Western India, the pudla.  In Italy, it is called socca or farinata. Each of these variations is made with different traditional ingredients and techniques.  Inspired by these recipes, today we are sharing how to make a thin, crisp gluten-free crepe that can be easily wrapped around filling. It’s spring time where we live, so our filling today will feature asparagus as it’s one of our all time favorite spring treats.

Serves: 2-4

Time: 1 hr

Ingredients:

1 bunch asparagus

zest from 1/2 lemon

1 bunch spring onions

salt

olive oil

For the pesto

1 bunch spinach, de-stemmed and thoroughly rinsed

1/4 cup sunflower seeds

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

1 tsp salt

3 sun-dried tomatoes, soaked and drained

2 tbsp nutritional yeast

zest of 1/2 lemon

2 tbsp lemon juice (start with less to try)

For the Chickpea Crepe

1 1/2 cups chickpea flour

1 1/4 tsp sea salt

1 3/4 cups water

3 tbsp olive oil

3/4 tsp thyme

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To make the chickpea crepes, whisk together chickpea flour, salt, water, olive oil, and thyme and allow to sit for 30 minutes. While crepe batter is sitting, make the spinach pesto. Start by soaking the sun-dried tomatoes in hot water until they are plump and re-hydrated. Note, if you are using sun-dried tomatoes in oil then you can skip this re-hydrating step.

Thoroughly clean and then blanch the spinach. To blanch, bring a small pot of water, well salted, to a boil. Put a bowl of ice water next to the stove. Add the cleaned spinach to the boiling water and cook about one minute. Remove with a slotted spoon and immediately immerse in ice water. Squeeze as much water out of the spinach as you can and drain the sun-dried tomatoes. Add both to a food processor or blender along with the rest of the ingredients from the ‘For the Pesto’ list. Blend until smooth and creamy.

Heat a small amount of oil in large flat pan. Once the oil is hot, add 1/3 cup of chickpea batter to the hot pan. Tilt the pan to spread out the batter, and cook until golden brown and crispy on one side. Be patient, when the bottom is golden brown and crispy, the edges of the top will be starting to show color. Flip the crepe over and cook until speckled with golden brown on the second side. Cooking crepes to have a crisp but flexible texture takes some practice. Some tips are make sure your oil is hot before you add the batter. Don’t add too much batter. Allow the first side to cook until an even color is achieved before flipping. Remember, the first pancake rule applies to crepes as well. Your first crepe might come out under cooked and crumbly. Don’t be discouraged, keep cooking, be patient, and future crepes will be better.

Turn on the oven to broil. Rinse the asparagus and trim about 1/2 inch off the bottom. Arrange on a baking sheet and drizzle with olive oil. Sprinkle about 1/4 tsp of salt and put in the broiler. Note, depending on your oven, this could be the top shelf, or a drawer at the bottom. Broil the asparagus for 7 minutes, remove and flip, and broil another 7 minutes for a total of 14 minutes of cooking time. The asparagus should be golden brown. Set aside to cool slightly. Once these are cool enough to touch (but still warm) slice into 1 inch long pieces. This is an optional step, but will make the food much easier to eat as otherwise the asparagus can become stringy when you bite into it.

Cut the spring onions lengthwise into thin pieces 3 inches long each. Fry in oil until golden brown. Salt and remove. Put them on a plate or piece of paper bag.

To assemble, spread the pesto on the crepe then add asparagus. Sprinkle with crispy spring onions and lemon zest. Form this into a hand wrap and enjoy!

Asparagus Pasta

Spring is in the air, and with that our thoughts are turning towards one of our favorite vegetables: asparagus! With such a short season, we always try to take advantage by eating asparagus on everything. In this recipe asparagus is the vegetable, the garnish, and the sauce for your pasta.

Below: harvesting the last of Asparagus for the season!

Serves: 4-6

Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 bunches of asparagus (skinnier is preferable)

½ lb Pasta (for GF pasta, Camille really likes Banza Chickpea Pasta)

1/4 cup olive oil, plus 2 tbsp for frying

1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, plus 4 extra sundried tomatoes (in oil) for garnish, chopped

1 avocado

1 cup salted water (take from the pasta water)

3 tbsp nutritional yeast

1 tbsp oregano

1 tbsp soy free Vegenaise or JustMayo

Juice and zest from 1 small lemon

½ tsp pepper

Salt to taste

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Cut the bottoms off the asparagus. Set aside 1 fistful of asparagus (you will broil these for a topping). Chop the rest of the asparagus stalks in 1 inch pieces and divide into two piles. It would be good if one pile had softer pieces such as the heads and slim stems and the other pile had the chunkier stalks. Make sure you have 3 cups of chunkier stalks which you will use to make the sauce.

Boil water for pasta. Dissolve enough salt in this water that it tastes like the ocean, for us this is usually around 3-4 tbsp to about 3 quarts of water. This may seem like a lot of salt, but most of it will be washed away when you drain the pasta, and the vegetables and pasta will absorb salt during the cooking process so that the dish will taste well seasoned without needing to be salted much when it is finished. Start to cook the pasta. When it has 3 min left to be fully cooked, add the pile of softer asparagus pieces (heads and slim stalks). Let this cook for about 3 minutes. The goal is to cook the asparagus until it is bright green and tender, but not so much that it starts to lose its color. If you haven’t already, steal about a cup of water from the pot and set aside, you will use this in the sauce. Then, after about a minute or when the asparagus is bright green, drain the pasta asparagus mixture, rinse with cold water, and set aside.

While the pasta cooks, you can start cooking the sauce. Start by braising 3 cups of asparagus stalks. To braise, heat up the pan with 2 tbsp olive oil. Once the oil is hot, add the asparagus and cook until browned. Add about 1/2 cup of water and cook until asparagus is soft.

Combine the braised asparagus with the 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, avocado, the cup of pasta water, nutritional yeast, oregano, Vegenaise, lemon juice (reserve 1 tsp), pepper, and salt in a food processor and puree until smooth.

While this is happening, drizzle some olive oil over the fistful of reserved whole asparagus pieces. Broil these in the oven until crispy (but not burnt). Drizzle the reserved lemon juice on the freshly roasted asparagus. Chop into inch long pieces.

Finally, combine the cooked pasta and asparagus with the sauce and top with broiled asparagus pieces and minced sun-dried tomatoes. Enjoy!