Sauteed Asparagus and Snap Peas

The sugar snap peas have started arriving in our CSA boxes, and the vibrant, green recipes that have had me drooling all winter are finally coming to our table.

Barefoot Contessa Parties!

Chinese Chicken Salad

This recipe (Barefoot Contessa Parties!) was amazing.  I substituted (what else?) a rotisserie chicken for the roasted chicken breasts, and we used less than half of a recipe for dinner.  It took me less than 10 minutes to throw this together for dinner.  This kind of recipe makes me really excited for fresh, local vegetables this summer:  I can imagine shredded raw carrots and lightly steamed green beans in this recipe to replace the asparagus and bell peppers.  The dressing is versatile enough to work with any range of vegetables (or possibly even seared beef in place of the roasted chicken).  The sesame oil in the dressing gives it a nice Asian flair, and I like to keep it on hand for other stir-fry recipes as well.

Oven Roasted Vegetables

From Barefoot Contessa:  Back to Basics, this recipe was just the right combination of earthy potatoes and fresh, green vegetables.  I substituted leeks for the fennel.

There’s No Place Like Home for the Hollandaise

The fact that I made homemade hollandaise sauce (well, along with the fact that I birthed his child) pretty much secures that I am indispensable to my husband.  Asparagus with Hollandaise (Barefoot in Paris) looks, smells, and tastes like Spring to me.  I’d never made it before, and it was surprisingly easy.  We have a friend (whose name I will protect) who pretends not to know how to cook, but whips up a fantastic hollandaise for every holiday meal, and I will always think of her when I make this.

Scrambled Eggs with Asparagus

As long as my husband was away and my parents were in town, I decided to throw caution to the wind by serving vegetables for breakfast.  This recipe (Barefoot Contessa Parties!) was damned tasty, and even the picky toddler scarfed down some eggs.  It could have something to do with the fact that they were made with half-and-half, an ingredient I will certainly be employing again in scrambled eggs.  The asparagus complemented them nicely.  I made a half-batch of the eggs for three (and a half) of us, which was just about right, but we almost gobbled up an entire batch of the asparagus.

Parmesan-Roasted Asparagus

As much as we’re trying to cook seasonally, the landscape (both on our table and outside) can be pretty bleak in Minnesota in January.  I am ashamed to admit that I don’t even know where these asparagus spears were grown, and I’m going to try not to think of the carbon fuels that were burned bringing them to Minnesota, but I could not resist when they were on sale (buy one, get one free) at our grocery store.  They were delicious.  If you haven’t tried roasting asparagus before, I highly recommend it as a pleasant diversion from the usual steaming.

Barefoot Contessa Family Style