Pretty pink

Well, I am going to say it: it is officially, unquestionably spring. Winter is gone. It is HERE. Why can I say that? Well, the first local asparagus showed up at the green market today, and I bought too many. So did the first watercress, and I bought that. And red stem spinach. And ramps. And dandelion greens. And Franca and her mom Jan are back and we had a lovely little reunion.

The warnings have gone out to get the wintered over brocolli rabb and kale while you can, because they're almost gone. Fiddleheads are right around the corner. And... while no one has enough to sell yet, there are local strawberries. Sweet, tiny little morsels that make you forget all of the woolly, cottony balls that you ate during the winter. And it's a tease, the way spring is. Like I say, no one has enough of them yet to make "something" with them other than a snack. I haven't seen any rhubarb yet, but I suspect I'll find that tomorrow.

And that's the topic of today: those two pink fruits of spring: strawberries and rhubarb.

Writing about strawberries is challenging because I can think of few things to do with them. Why? Because I find their flavor so transparent and so fleeting, that cooking them seems to be a real crime. Once, and only once, I ate a dish of a baked rhubarb strawberry crumble from one of my favorite restaurants. A miss. A total, and complete, misguided miss. No strawberry flavor at all. So when you're working with strawberries, "keep it raw."

Of course, make sure you're getting good ones. Any good farmers market strawberry purveyor will let you taste a berry. Don't be greedy. Bite into it. Is it red all the way through and soft? That's what you want. You'll pay for this ripeness, because it doesn't come cheap. The berries have to stay on the plant longer, and if you're picking strawberries other than recreationally, this is brutally hard work. Doing it by machine almost inevitably damages most of the fruit, so you have to do it by hand. That means bending your back, at an unpleasant angle, for many hours at a time. It hurts. And if they're fully ripe, you can't just grab. You have to pick, carefully. You can crush them very easily (those are the ones I like the best). The folks who do this work almost never get paid properly, and if they did, you'd pay a LOT more. So treasure them.

Good strawberries are also fragile. Plan on eating them no more than 2, MAYBE three days after you get them.

So if you're not going to just put them in a bowl, pick them out and eat them, or put them with some whipped cream, what do you do?

Glad I asked. Here are some ideas. One is the magical combination that results when strawberries are combined with balsamic vinegar. If you are lucky enough to have some of the old stuff, the really, REALLY good old stuff, be sparing with it, and use that. Just a tiny sprinkle over them will do. Let them sit for half hour like that, if you can wait. And then just eat them out of hand.

That's my favorite. But how else?

Well... how about sliced and sugared with some ricotta? That's going to be breakfast tomorrow, because Nevia gave me ONE container of them (all she could spare). We have some goat ricotta in the house, and that's where it will go. If you happen to be a good dessert maker and you can make some panna cotta, put the vinegared berries over that, and watch people marvel at the miraculous dessert you made out of almost nothing.

Onto rhubarb now. I think every person I know has grown up in a home where they grew rhubarb in the backyard. And everyone has stories of either loving or hating it. I didn't have rhubarb or a backyard, but I love it every which what way I can get it. I will write more about rhubarb in the immediate future, but for now, I want to pass on an amazingly simple, amazingly good recipe, that I got from the head chef at the restaurant called Jarnac. She did this recipe two years ago, and I want to talk her into doing it again. Try it.

What you need is rhubarb, a very sharp knife, sugar, and vanilla ice cream. That's it. Clean off your rhubarb. Sometimes it's dirty, and it sometimes shows a "beard" of yucky bits from when they harvested it. Try to get thin stalks for this. Then get your knife, and cut very thin slices, like celery half moons off of them. When you have a nice quantity, toss them in a bowl of sugar, just to coat them. The rhubarb will have a wet side from the cutting, and the slices will pick up the sugar nicely. Now just scoop out that ice cream, and put a big portion of the rhubarb on top of it.

DONE. And you have a dessert that not too many people have had. And I guarantee, you will be pleased with it.

And think about it: how much time did it take you to do it? I bet you could do the same thing if you are an obsessive cook and made flan, or panna cotta, or some other vanilla custardy type of dessert.

Go forth, find that early spring fruit, and get to work. The time they'll be here will not be long enough, and you should enjoy them when you can.