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Delectable delights
Spring brings a cornucopia of seasonal foods
BY JOHNETTE RODRIGUEZ
Spring Guide

The wild ones

From seal-watching expeditions to Roger Williams Park Zoo, Rhode Island offers plenty of springtime opportunities to glimpse the animal kingdom

By Johnette Rodriguez

Great outdoors

A short list of destinations for shaking off winter doldrums

By Cristi Laquer

Delectable delights

Spring brings a cornucopia of seasonal foods

By Johnette Rodriguez

Back before American chefs caught on to the secret of using locally grown, seasonally fresh ingredients to give their cuisine a nouvelle sparkle as well as a homemade taste, advocates of wild foods were tapping into seasonal cycles, and proponents of organic farming were suggesting that backyard (or nearby) veggies had more flavor. Nowadays, all three streams of interest often converge, as foods that were once considered just for foragers (i.e., wild leeks, fiddleheads and morels) have entered the mainstream, and as more and more restaurants seek out products from local growers or harvesters.

Consumers have many options. They can learn to recognize a few wild foods found in their backyards; they can seek out spring items at farmers’ markets and local groceries; and they can be adventurous in trying special spring offerings at Rhody’s restaurants. All of these methods will bring the taste of spring to your palate, as you wait for the warmth of longer days and the higher angle of the sun to kick in.

Without getting too detailed, let me mention some of the most common (and often overlooked) wild greens that I eat from my backyard: dandelions, lamb’s quarters, sorrel, purslane, and violets. The first and the last are identifiable by their flowers, though it’s good to grab the dandelion leaves before the buds unfurl. Since the ones in your yard will bloom at various stages, you can remind yourself of what the notched-blade leaves look like and pick the ones that haven’t yet bloomed. The smallest and earliest are tasty in salads, mixed with other greens. But if they seem too bitter, you can blanch them and then sauté them with butter and onions. Larger dandelion greens are also available at local supermarkets.

Violets, both leaves and flowers, are good in salads, as is the succulent-looking purslane, which grows close to the ground with fat, stubby leaves, and a reddish tint to its stems. Sorrel, in its wild version, is a short plant with small sword-shaped leaves that have a lemony taste (we called them "sour grass" as kids), and it can also be munched on raw or cooked up in a soup. Cultivated, it has much bigger leaves — gathering those small ones could take a while! — and its characteristic tang makes it a good partner to fish dishes.

My favorite of these spring greens is lamb’s quarters, kind of like a wild spinach, just as tender when steamed, with a bit more "green" taste to it. Its leaves have a silvery-white powdery look (most people view this as a weed), and once they are up a few inches, they attract small bugs that would ordinarily feed on other tender young greens. So it’s worth leaving a few plants to attract those, while gathering the others early (cutting the stems close to the ground, so that they will re-grow) and enjoying them.

Two notes of caution: 1) Have someone who knows these greens show them to you, rather than just trying to learn them from a book. Once you know them, they’re not easily mistaken for anything else; 2) Never eat anything from a yard that’s been sprayed with herbicides (or next door to such a yard). There are many, many other common wild foods in Rhode Island, including fiddleheads (the unfurled heads of ostrich ferns), wild asparagus, Jerusalem artichokes, chickweed, watercress, and amaranth, and the fun of finding them competes with the fun of eating them.

Wild mushrooms came into "new American cooking" at least 15 years ago and then into the supermarkets and the kitchens of home cooks. One of the mushrooms I always associate with spring is the morel, a type of sponge mushroom. Again, if you go hunting with a mushroom expert, you can easily learn the distinctive shape of morels — an elongated, hollow top with deep pits and a hollow stem, reminiscent of mushrooms in European fairy tales.

Brian Maynard, a horticulture professor at the University of Rhode Island, has eaten many kinds of mushrooms from Rhode Island’s fields and forests, including morels, which he once found in his yard. He also is "really comfortable" with hen-of-the-woods, chicken-of-the-woods (different shelf mushrooms found on rotting wood), oyster mushrooms, honey mushrooms, and ink caps, although he admits that the latter variety turn black and are not that appetizing to look at. The key to cooking the shelf mushrooms, according to Maynard, is to parboil them in salt water for five minutes before "dicing ’em up and sautéing ’em."

Again, the more adventurous of home cooks may have discovered some of these wild mushrooms right on a supermarket shelf, as well as many unusual spring greens. Eastside Marketplace stocks watercress, mint, arugula, chard, and collard greens from Massachusetts, as well as fiddleheads from Canada. Vidalia onions are another spring vegetable, though they come from North Carolina or Georgia.

Whole Foods Market looks beyond local growers for spring foods, with California asparagus and artichokes, and fruits from regions now having summer, such as New Zealand and South Africa. Later in April, however, they will have New England-grown fiddleheads, Maine lettuce, and cabbages and broccoli from Little Compton’s Wishing Stone Farm. Whole Foods also got several kinds of wild mushrooms from New Hampshire last summer, including oyster, hen-of-the-woods, and morels.

In addition to produce, local markets have been carrying Maine shrimp, usually available fresh just during February and March. These small pink wonders have the true taste of shrimp, in contrast to the frozen ones from Asian waters. You can find Maine shrimp in New Hampshire and Maine in the summer, fried up or in chowders from fresh-frozen ones, but now is the time to get their full flavor. Another short-season seafood item is shad roe, harvested from a large herring called the American shad that runs up freshwater rivers to spawn in the spring. Try Eastside or Whole Foods for these items, and ask at other supermarkets.

Another non-produce category of spring foods is cheese made from goat’s milk or sheep’s milk, because the seasonal birth of kids and lambs creates more milk. Matt Jennings at Providence’s Farmstead Cheese is eagerly awaiting his crop of spring cheeses: a goat’s milk variety from Carolyn Hillman, in Massachusetts; a semi-aged goat’s milk cheese, called crottina, from Blue Ledge Farm, in Vermont; a firm, dry Alpine-style sheep’s milk cheese from Willow Hill in Massachusetts; and both goat’s and sheep’s milk cheeses from Lazy Lady, also in Vermont.

"The milk in the spring and summer is of a higher quality because they’re all eating fresh grass," Jennings stressed. "Some of these are aged no more than 60 days, so they have a real fresh, almost yogurty texture, with a clean, bright flavor reminiscent of spring."

Two of the state’s organic farms, Casey Farm and Earth Care Farm, are gearing up to open a brand-new farmer’s market, called the Coastal Growers Market, on Saturday mornings, starting May 21, at Casey Farm, on Route 1A in Saunderstown. The state Department of Environmental Management Web site (www.state.ri.us/dem/programs/bnatres/agricult/markets.htm) lists 15 farmer’s markets at 21 sites, on varying days of the week. Keep checking it, however, because Coastal Growers is not the only new one planned for this summer.

Polly Hutchison, co-manager at Casey Farm (with husband Mike), stresses that the Village Hearth will bring bread from Jamestown; Watson Farm will have organic lamb and beef; Majik Coffee and a local fish supplier will also participate. Some of the earliest greens that Casey Farm will offer are sorrel (she promises a cream of sorrel soup recipe); and lovage, a stronger-flavored member of the parsley family that Hutchison swears by for potato salad. And there will be some early carrots and beets, raised under cover to keep off late frosts. By late May, Casey will also have scallions and early onions.

The other mover behind this new market is Jane Senecal, co-manager of Earth Care Farm, with her husband, Ryan. They will have many early greens: spinach, arugula, baby kale, boy choy, Swiss chard, collards, upland cress (with a similar but more spicy flavor than watercress), and a mild "mustard mix," with five different kinds of mustard greens, for use in salad or as a cooked vegetable.

And, as much as home cooks are seeking out spring ingredients, so are local chefs. Chef Stephen Buono, at Raphael’s Bar-Risto, is looking forward to serving spring lamb with a pistachio and goat cheese crust, and he likes to feature the spring mushrooms, such as morels or maitakes, as a pate on multigrain crostini.

Olga Bravo, co-owner of Olga’s Cup & Saucer, will use the plentiful rhubarb that grows right on the Providence eatery’s corner property at Richmond and Point streets for pies and other desserts, combining it with strawberries as soon as the local ones ripen in June. Olga’s also has pear and apricot trees against the warmth of the building; they bloom in April and begin to bear in June. And Olga’s will use early local asparagus in salads as well as cooked dishes.

Nat Hughes, executive chef at the Gatehouse, also likes spring asparagus, including the trendy white variety, and he gets baby vegetables, such as carrots, peas, fennel, heirloom greens, and baby greens, from a grower in Pawtucket. Hughes, as do many other chefs, switches to "much lighter cooking methods of poaching and sautéing in milder weather." He turns to cooking more fowl, including game hens and duck, also in lighter ways, sometimes for entrée salads. And he watches the seasonal entry of seafood items, such as halibut, tilapia, and bass, which are just now coming in.

Jules Ramos, executive chef at Moda, also gets seasonal seafood, with monkfish and lemon sole being current favorites, as well as "great oysters from Sakonnet Point." He cooks shad roe (from Connecticut) and soft-shell crabs (from Maryland) when he can get them, but he stresses that they are only around for a couple of weeks and then they’re gone until next year. From March through May, Ramos gets small artichokes, early herbs and edible flowers from a grower in Bristol who raises them in a greenhouse. He expects to have fiddleheads in April, blanching and sautéing them with shallots: "You don’t want to do too much with them," he says, "just poach them and then sauté them with butter."

For ramps, better known in the Northeast as "wild leeks," Ramos pickles them with garlic cloves, black peppercorns, bay leaves, and a bit of rice vinegar, and uses them the rest of the year with heavy dishes, such as braised monkfish. He mentioned young fava beans as another spring vegetable: "You can almost eat them raw in a salad, just drop ’em in water a few seconds and serve ’em cold."

Ramps make a nice garnish for the entrées created by Rob Biela, the executive chef at Newport’s West Deck. He also chooses fiddleheads as a garnish, with their slightly bitter flavor. And, like Hughes, he emphasizes lighter dishes — "lighter on butter and oil and with more vibrant colors on the plate."

He looks for wild rice coming out of Minnesota, morels from Washington, and for soft-shell crabs and shad roe. Biela often prepares shad roe with asparagus and brown butter, taking care not to rupture the membrane around the eggs, which encases the roe into two separate sacs or lobes. He serves it with plenty of fresh parsley and lemon slices.

So, there are many opportunities in Rhode Island to experience the freshness and newness of spring through your taste buds, beginning in your backyard, continuing at a farmer’s market or supermarket, and working right on up to an elegant restaurant meal. Guten appetit!


Issue Date: April 1 - 7, 2005
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