Juneuary

Sometimes the old, simple recipes are just what the doctor ordered. For me, that often begins with a trip to the farmers' market. This time of year in the pacific northwest is known, with some rue, as Juneuary - for those who don't know, spring and summer ar rather relaxed about when they decide to arrive. It's the time of year when from day to day it could feel like winter, spring, or summer, and so it's the right time of year for food that incorporates flavours and textures from all of these seasons. And it's at this time of year that we start to get tender young asparagus and the first morel mushrooms of the season. Asparagus, in some ways, is the very symbol of spring: the first energetic shoots of a plant that fly from the ground just when the weather is warm enough and the days long enough to spur the first imaginings of summer picnics. At the market this week the asparagus were particularly fine and fresh and so I bought a small handful. A old reliable spring dish is blanched asparagus with Hollandaise sauce - tangy, bright, aspirational. Though to me, Hollandaise is also very much a winter food; it's a part of big breakfasts on cold, rainy Sundays and its cousin, Sauce Béarnaise, is peerless as companion to a fine steak, preferably cooked over a fire and eaten while watching at fresh snowfall. So you see, I already had the makings of a lovely Juneuary dish. And then I passed the wild mushroom stand. And saw (and smelled) this year's first morels.

Morels taste of the loam and forest - at once reminiscent of both musky, humid summer and also earthy, hearty winter food. The first morels are exciting - as asparagus ushers in spring, so do morels usher in summer. The fact that these milestones appear simultaneous here in western Washington, well, I suppose that's Mother Nature's sense of humor. But it does allow for some delicious combinations. In short, this evening for dinner I had fresh asparagus with morel Hollandaise sauce. Simple, easy, but it almost defines luxurious eating. Warm, beguiling, at once crunchy and velvety, tangy like the spring weather, rich like a winter feast, and bright like the summer sun. You may have heard of truffled Hollandaise before - this similar, but not as wintery. The only thing you have to do is cook the morels in the butter you melt for the sauce and then whisk them along with the sauce as you slowly thicken it. I used the Joy of Cooking recipe for "Whole Egg Hollandaise" as the base.

Happy Juneuary, everyone!

Birthday Cake

Decadence is a term that communicates luxury and excess, richness and indulgence. So what better term to describe the ideal birthday cake. Credit for this one goes almost entirely to this post of Orangette, where a great many scrumptious things may be found. But, as usual, a twist was in order - in this case a little touch of lavender. The cake truly is sumptuous as well as scrumptious: It is light without being thin, and yet heavy without being a rock settling in your stomach. It's full of carroty goodness both in flavour and vitamins, and yet it could get anyone to eat vegetables. And it would be completely in its element in the exalted company of the Black Forest Gateaux, Flourless Chocolate Cakes, Strawberry-Caramel Cheesecakes, and Custard Cream Pies of cakey heaven. I very slightly changed two things about the recipe, in addition to the lavender twist. First, I baked the layers in pyrex pie-plates, since I'm increasingly uncomfortable with cheap non-stick-oleum cookware. Apparently the conversion is easy. If anything, lower the oven temperature 15-25 degrees, or shorten the baking time by about 10%. Just don't forget to grease and flour the baking dishes - I even used parchment paper in the bottom just in case, which turned out to be a good move since this cake is so moist it is a bit sticky until it cools a bit. The other thing I changed was the amount of lemon in the icing. As I was adding the lemon juice, it kept tasting better and better, so I probably ended up with about triple the recommended amount purely as a matter of taste. It did make the icing a little soft...The lavender twist was as follows: I took a little of the plain icing, before adding the lemon, and added a very few drops of lavender oil to it. Careful! Lavender oil is strong stuff and many people think it tastes like soap if it is at all overdone. The trick is to make the flavour the same as a passing whiff of a fresh lavender field - sweet, warm, herbal, and a little dusty - with none of the astringency that comes with the concentration of the oil. In short, lots of sugar to very little oil. Once flavoured, I colored the icing to lavender purple and then used it to write on the cake. It was a little soft for cake-writing, but it worked and it gave each piece just the slightest hint of lavender, which went really well with the lemon in the rest of the icing and the deep, slightly savoury sweetness of the cake. I'll not reproduce the recipe here, since the link above will suffice. If trying the lavender experiment, start with ONE drop in about 1/2-cup of icing, mix well and taste. Then increase in strength one drop at a time until you think it is good. Oh, and I also dusted the whole thing with powdered sugar when finished which helped retain the icing and also looked a bit like snow.