I Need Spring Produce Recipes

CM: All right, we're going to interrogate that in a sec, but yeah, I found a lot of examples of things that you've done with radishes.

SU: Wait. I didn't know this was a researched episode.

CM: Whoa. Yeah, no, we did our homework for this one.

SU: Okay.

CM: There's also your crispy miso-butter fish, which had asparagus alongside.

SU: Yes, one of my first recipes, Chris, on this website.

CM: I know. There also is the grilled asparagus with tahini mayo. The tahini mayo living forever in my heart, as Bagna Cold-a, and I will not let it go. Also, yeah, for what it's worth, you've got a green pea fritter recipe.

SU: Oh, yeah.

CM: With the cottage cheese. People love that one.

SU: Yeah, people love that one, though in all fairness, that is made with frozen peas, but still. It's springy. It's the notion of spring.

CM: Yeah. Talk to me about the notion of spring, broad strokes, spring produce, what are we actually talking about? What is out there?

SU: In my mind, spring produce, as clearly evidenced by all the research that you've done on me, in my mind, spring produce is one thing and one thing only, and it's asparagus.

CM: What?

SU: It's asparagus. I'm a fool for asparagus. I don't know what it is. I see asparagus and I go crazy. Every time, it's like the first time I'm seeing them, every year.

CM: What else is out there?

SU: There's the radish. There are ramps, which I don't know any more. I still genuinely do love the flavor of ramps, but then I think they were so hot and they were very restaurant industry insider for a while. Then people glommed onto that and now it's like, I don't know. Is it cool to love ramps anymore? I have to say, I have to say-

CM: Do you love ramps?

SU: I actually genuinely love ramps, especially when I make them into a butter or pesto, which is what I did last year.

CM: Oh, you did. Yeah.

SU: I have started loving them even more because the last two years, I went to actually forage for ramps myself. As somebody who is not an outdoorsy person, that just made me feel so, I was like, “That's it. I'm an agriculturist.”

CM: Agriculturist.

SU: I really felt accomplished, digging up the earth. I was like, “Yes, I can live off this land.”

CM: Spring produce for me, it's the radishes. It's even fava beans, peas, fiddlehead ferns, morel mushrooms. What was that guffaw of disgust? Fiddleheads?

SU: Yeah, also quite a bit of debate on that one.

CM: Yeah, they're a little woolly. I don't know that they're entirely food for humans.

SU: Yes, yes. This is really foraged for sure.

CM: Yes. It's forage for maybe a large ruminant of some kind with a few extra stomachs to actually process them. Fiddleheads are the curled heads of ferns that emerge from the ground pre-unfurl, so they're the =tightly coiled heads of juvenile fern plants, which erupt out of forest floors everywhere throughout the Northeast.