Don't Step on the Grass...

But no, not that grass in the lawn. And, no, not that either.

You may know it as asparagus, but come mid-May around here, it's simply grass. Hadley grass, to be specific. Hadley, on the rich floodplains just across the Connecticut River and hair north of here, is world-renowned for its asparagus. Or at least it was, up until the 1970s, when a soil-borne fungus more than literally decimated Hadley's asparagus production. In the decades leading up to that, Hadley farmers would pick and prepare up to 50 tons of asparagus each day of the fleetingly brief few weeks of the season. Hadley grass reportedly turned up in chic European restaurants and even at springtime feasts held by the Queen of England.

Although local asparagus production doesn't take on the epic proportions it did forty years ago, there are still a handful of asparagus farmers in full-scale production and many backyard growers with extra to sell. The town still takes pride in this element of its history, honoring the tender green spears with a major community festival and, I kid you not, an ice cream flavor. And, as it's an ingredient where freshness is especially rewarded, it's still worth trawling the back roads in Hadley and the surrounding towns this time of year for hand-written signs that simply read "Grass." Or, if you're me, quietly coveting the asparagus in the adjacent community garden plot and settling for taking many pictures of it and then buying a bunch from the stand just up the hill.

So, why simply grass? One variant, based on a folk etymology of the word, dating back to the 17th century, was sparrowgrass. The name held on until late in the 1800s, and, according to a 1791 pronunciation dictionary, calling it "asparagus" implied "an air of stiffness and pedantry." I can't say for certain why it stuck around here, but even aside from a desire to avoid stiffness and pedantry, it was grown in sufficient volume that it was almost as common as that grass in the lawn.

Asparagus being as versatile as it is and asparagus season being as fleeting as it is, I've been chowing through it every which way since the first local asparagus came in about two weeks ago. I was thinking of writing about asparagus and chèvre risotto or lemony shaved asparagus salad, but today's cool, rainy weather put me in a soup mood so I put together a creamy, smooth asparagus soup, accented with dried shiitake mushroom and white wine and topped with the asparagus tips, toasted with slivered garlic.

Creamy Asparagus-Mushroom Soup

gluten/grain-free, optionally vegetarian

• 1 lb. asparagus
• 1 onion, small dice
• 4 cloves garlic
• 6-8 dried shiitake mushrooms
• 1 Tablespoon butter
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1¼ c. dry white wine
• ½ c. cream
• 2 c. chicken or veggie broth

You have two options with the dried shiitakes: you can grind them up and add them as a powder, or you can simmer them in the stock until they're soft enough to blend. If you're simmering them in stock, start that first. Break up the mushrooms coarsely with your hands and put them in a small saucepan with the broth and bring up to heat over medium-high heat. The mushrooms will need to simmer for at least 15-20 minutes to soften. If grinding them up, run them through a spice grinder until fine and set aside.

Dice onion. Melt butter with olive oil in a large saucepan over medium-low heat, then add onion, stirring occasionally. Meanwhile, peel and mince two cloves of garlic and prep the asparagus. Snap off both ends of the asparagus (this is a good job for earnest helpers of all ages and abilities). If you're running short on time, you can cut off the top and bottom inch of the spears in one fell swoop. Scrap the cut ends, but put the tips aside to put on top later. Cut the stalks into pieces about an inch long.

Once the onion has started to get clear and soft, add the garlic, salt and asparagus. Stir until the garlic gets fragrant, then add a cup of wine. If simmering mushrooms, add the mushrooms and broth, too. If using ground mushrooms, whisk with the stock and add to the pot with the asparagus. Let simmer until the asparagus is soft, 10-15 minutes, add the cream and remaining wine, then blend until smooth.

Sliver the other two cloves of garlic and saute in a little olive oil with the asparagus tips and salt and pepper. Serve soup with garlicky asparagus tips on top.

Shiitake Part 2: Hot Cucumber Salad

As the last post discussed, we returned from Tuesday farmer's market with a pint of fresh, local shiitake mushrooms and were determined to make them shine in simple dishes.

Two days later, a friend of ours showed up for dinner with a flat of fresh veg. from the farm where he's been living. He turns up occasionally with interesting selections of ingredients in search of a good home. Friends like this are good friends to have. This haul included a few pints of different tomato varieties, several colors of summer squash, a half-dozen cucumbers, some mismatched eggplants and a tiny, heart-sized watermelon. While compulsively munching little, orange, crack-laced tomatoes, we described a dish another recent dinner guest had shared with us that we found astonishing: hot cucumber salad. Something she had picked up in her travels in Western China, primarily Gansu province, the dish is hot in both senses of the word: served hot from the wok and liberally dosed with chili and garlic.

Up until then, it hadn't occurred to me to do a cooked dish composed primarily of cucumber; it seemed anathema to the vision of cucumber as cool, crisp crunch. Most of the hot cucumber I'd eaten involved throwing some into a fried rice in its very last moments on the stove, or including it al minuto in a brothy soup. This dish totally sold me on the idea, though. Remembering a languishing, slightly wilted half-head of greenleaf lettuce, we decided to add that, making it somewhat of a hot reimagining of a green salad. Also, it seemed a perfect foil to our plan for the second half of the fresh shiitakes, cooking them with Korean rice cake.

Korean rice cake (dduk) is a little like a giant, glutinous rice noodle (which, despite the name, is gluten-free), which we buy sliced on the bias into rounds. It has a thick, chewy texture and pairs well with all kinds of things. In fact, between that and gochujang, a thick, chili-based condiment that has been near indispensable in Korean cuisine since the introduction of chili in the 18th century, you have a kick-ass base for a stir fry which you can plug almost anything into. But that's a story for another day: gochujang would have overwhelmed the delicate little mushrooms.

Instead, we cooked the rice cake with a little bit of onion, oil and salt over high heat to get a little bit of toasty char flavor (contrary to what some may say, burnt is a flavor; you just probably don't want it to be the dominant flavor of your dish), took it out, cooked the mushroom similarly, and then tossed them together. And we saw that it was good. It's so simple, it's almost redundant to write a formal recipe to follow that.

Hot Cucumber Salad

vegan, gluten-free
Serves 2-3
• 2 med-large cucumbers, halved, seeded and bias-sliced med. thick
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 whole, dried red chilis, broken loosely
OR
• 1 tsp. red pepper flake
• 2 tsp. peanut or neutral oil
• ½-1 tsp. salt

Optional:
• 1 small head leafy lettuce, sliced into 1" strips
• 1 Tblsp. rice vinegar

Prep vegetables. Heat wok over high heat. Swirl in oil. Add red pepper and about half the garlic. Tossing until the garlic smells toasty, about 10 seconds. Add cucumbers and toss. Sprinkle with about half the salt. and toss occasionally until cumbers start to get slightly soft, about 2-3 minutes. Add lettuce and vinegar, sprinkle with remaining salt and garlic. Toss to combine and cook until lettuce is somewhat wilted, 1-2 minutes.

Shiitake & Rice Cake Stir Fry

Vegan, gluten-free
Serves 2, unless you've been sitting around eating too many little tomatoes, in which case it may serve 3
• ~1 lb sliced rice cake (½ the bag)
• ½ med. sweet white onion, med. dice
• 4 tsp. peanut or neutral oil
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 c. fresh shiitake, sliced
• ½ c. baby bella/crimini mushrooms, sliced

Heat wok over high heat. Swirl in 2 tsp. of the oil and add half the onion. Toss and add the rice cake. Sprinkle with half the salt. Toss/stir occasonally, letting the rice cake get a few charry speckles and the onion get a little soft, about 5 minutes. Remove to serving bowl.

Swirl in the other 2 tsp, of oil, add mushrooms and remaining onion. Sprinkle with remaining salt. Stir/toss until mushrooms & onions start getting soft, 3-5 minutes. Turn off heat, add rice cake back to wok and toss until combined.

Do You Know the Mushroom Man?

With the farmshare, we don't end up at the local farmer's markets that often. It's always an eye-opener as to how much more than staple veggies is available! When we went this week, among the treasures that followed us home were some pre-Prohibition style ginger ale from Green River Ambrosia, red currant-topped shaved ice (which didn't make it home, let's be honest), and some fresh shiitake mushrooms. These were particularly exciting. I play with dried shiitake all the time, but the fresh deal has a more interesting, subtle flavor and less toothy texture. We got there late enough in the day that it was the only variety the Mushroom Guy had for sale (it's his display above with lobster mushroom, coral mushroom, vampire squid edible bolete, etc.).

We decided we needed to really make the most of the pint of fresh shiitake, and it ended up becoming two very simple East Asian-style meals, leaving very little to get in the way of the fungus.

Day 1: Shiitake Rice Bowl

The other thing that's been a big influence on our cooking this week was the appearance in the mailbox of vol. 1 of Lucky Peach magazine, the inaugural issue of a gonzo gourmet magazine ring-led by Momofuku executor David Chang. The whole issue is nominally dedicated to ramen, and, to be sure, there's enough ramen-related content in there to fuel both a dissertation and a serious noodle-jones. It also takes time to wander off topic long enough to document a shared drunken rant on mediocrity between Chang, Anthony Bourdain and Wylie Dufresne, ruminate on the nature and relevance of authenticity in food, and dedicate the final quarter of the issue just to eggs.

The egg section not only describes several out-there egg recipes, but dedicates several pages just to examining about 12 different stages of boiled egg. This seemed to feed into our collective vision of a simple mushroom dish. Chang let slip that his preferred egg cooking time is 5 min. 10 sec., just enough to set the white and thicken the yolk slightly into a silky, unctuous texture. The dish was as simple as this: fresh shiitake sauteed with a little salt and a soft-boiled egg over rice, topped off with a lightly sweet shoyu broth and slivered scallion. That's all.

And really, that's all it needed.

Shiitake Rice Bowl

vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free
• 1 c. fresh shiitake mushroom (or dried shiitake, soaked), sliced
• 1-2 tsp. neutral oil
• ½ tsp. salt
• 2 c. cooked rice
• 1 scallion, sliced thin according to preference
• 2 eggs, boiled for 5 min, 10 sec, peeled

The broth
• 3/4 c warm water
• 1/4 c. soy sauce
• 1 Tblsp. sugar

Heat wok or other wide pan over high heat. Swirl with oil and add mushrooms. Sprinkle with salt and toss. Cook, stirring/tossing frequently until mushrooms are cooked soft, 3-5 min. Remove from heat.

Divide rice into two bowls and put half the mushrooms on top of each, along with one egg. Pour half the broth over each and top with a healthy pinch of scallion.