Boing!

"Spring is sprung, der grass is riz,

I wonder where dem boidies is...

Der little boids is on der wing, 

Ain't dat absoid?

Der little wing is on der boid!"

'Spring in the Bronx' there, to welcome us into this glorious springtime.  Hurrah for all things spring-y: sunshine, daffs, the first flush of green on the trees, root veg going out, softer stuff coming in, not forgetting all that rising sap of course.  I'm not going to 'ahem' or pretend that I didn't just type that, no point in being shy about it - let's face it, the clocks go forward and everyone starts to feel a bit frisky.  I for one am yearning to do this.  Seriously, I am one full skirt away from breaking into song every time I open the front door.

However, this is not a blog about friskiness, this is a blog about food, so I will now turn my attention away from the bedroom and towards the kitchen.  Oh, come on now, don't act disappointed.  You know where you can get that if you want it and it isn't here.  Besides, my mum reads this.

However, that does not mean that I am not going to get a bit excited.  Food is doing exciting things at the moment, at least in the seasonal fruit and veg world.  A bit like blossom, you spend ages looking out for the new stuff and poof, there it all is at once.  I try to buy the majority of my fruit and veg from my local farmers' market in Bermondsey, for many reasons: it's cheaper, it's tastier, I can buy only what I need, it's friendlier than a supermarket and I'm middle-class.  I spent ages last year pestering poor Ted, the veg man, about when rhubarb was going to arrive, so I learnt my lesson and kept quiet this year, instead just waiting for it patiently and then getting distracted by the wild garlic.  Dear reader, when I saw it, I actually cried "Wild garlic?!  Woohoo!"  Yup, out loud, in public, the works.  Hey ho.  

I had high hopes for my wild garlic - maybe I'd do a frittata with it, see what it did in a stir-fry, wilt it in a risotto, something along those lines.  But I forgot about it.  The poor stuff went all sad and droopy, so I thought I should humiliate it even further by pounding it with pine nuts and parmesan to make pesto:

Just look at that rich green!  Mashed with goats' cheese and stirred through linguine, with the addition of some roasted tomatoes, it made a fine dinner.  Blimey, it was strong though.  I reckon it's probably better to temper it with basil, rather than all garlic, it was a bit full-on otherwise.

I was rather thrilled by a weekend lunch of steamed purple sprouting broccoli, boiled eggs and buttered soda bread:

Those eggs are from the market too and you can definitely tell that it's boom time in eggland - look at the size of them, fairly bursting out of the eggcups!  And the colour!

That's definitely the best thing about spring food, the reminder that colour exists.  Here's that rhubarb I was talking about too, after cooking it with orange juice, brown sugar and stem ginger to go in an oaty crumble, served with thick, pale yellow Jersey cream:

Don't tell me you can't feel that sap rising now...