Last night I made myself Roast Chicken with 4 Alliums. Nothing fancy: just half a good chicken roasted over split leeks, surrounded with ramps and garlic cloves and a few scallions just because I had them.
A friend brought me something I had never had before up from North Carolina - branch lettuce. She says it's the centerpiece of her family's annual spring supper: "branch lettuce (a wild green served with spring onions and wilted with hot bacon drippings and vinegar), cornbread, pinto beans and crispy smoked pork." Wow! I, rather boringly, just mixed mine with arugula, sliced Jerusalem artichokes and ramp greens for a spring salad. I loved it: tart and slightly fuzzy - it reminded me a little of the clover-shaped sweetgrass we used to pick and eat when I was little.
Anyway, had that salad tonight with my friend Ruby. We also had that simple pasta of shells, bacon, peas, ricotta and Parmesan. Dessert was a strawberry-rhubarb crumble and some of the delicious buttermilk ice cream I got at Marlowe and Daughters yesterday. I pushed some blueberry muffins on her as she was leaving, since I made a batch of Cook's Illustrated's (I shouldn't say so, when I didn't follow all their instructions and added the berries whole instead of cooking half of them into a jam!) and can't possibly eat them all while Matt's out of town...
Oh! Sunday, some friends and I tried the new pie shop, Four and Twenty Blackbirds. The space was adorable and one of the pies - Lemon Chess - outstanding, sort of like a wedge of lemon square. The pear-ginger was just not my kind of palate and as to the Shoo-Fly, why, she who orders shoo-fly pie should know what she's getting, especially if she's just had some in Philadelphia two days prior!
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