8 Ways with Spring Vegetables

Finally, the sun is shining but spring so far has been hard.

We helped feed two orphan lambs on Sunday whose mother had died in a snow drift. And our local greengrocer is in despair.

We should now be enjoying the very first of the asparagus and new season cauliflower, purple sprouting broccoli, savoy cabbage, sorrel, spinach and spring greens, but the first spring vegetable crops have been wrecked by the late snow.



Anything locally grown you can actually get yours hands on is going for silly prices.

I just hope that today's sunshine lasts long enough to save the rest of the crop because nothing tastes quite so good as those first impossibly tender spring vegetables.

All they need to be mouth wateringly delicious is a light steam and some very delicate flavouring that enhances their succulence. My favourites for this are ...

1. The lightest vinaigrette of olive oil and lemon juice
2. Really good butter
3. A little mint 
4. A little garlic
5. Shavings of Parmesan
6. Crumbles of Lancashire cheese
7. Garlic and fresh ginger
8. Hollandaise but only for dipping

Even though none of these need a recipe book, I do find myself sitting down over and over again to read those cookery writers who enjoy and celebrate vegetables in their own right.

I could escape for hours into Nigel Slater's Tender - A Cook and his Vegetable Patch and The Kitchen Diaries in which he records his attempts to eat seasonally throughout the year.

And I love Jane Grigson's Vegetable Book for the background and history she gives to our modern vegetable crops and River Cottage Veg Everyday for day to day inspiration in the winter when the veg needs a bit more jazzing up.

I have also got my eagle eye on Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall's new River Cottage Veg, which is due out next month, and is as he describes it a one man mission to encourage us all to enjoy more vegetables.

I would so love to hear your favourite veg recipes - do link them up below. And if you haven't already do follow me on Pinterest ...

Mums Make Lists

Vegetables

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