Fresh Tart

Asparagus is of course one of spring's best treats. Whether steamed, roasted, or sauteed, everyone adores asparagus snuggled up to eggs or salty ham or even better, both! But my personal favorite is butttery asparagus, especially showered with toasted nuts. This soup puts a good amount of asparagus to creamy use, with brown butter and pecans to gild the lily. A squeeze of lemon and fresh chives keep the gilding in check.

A soup this silky smooth and pretty seems fussy or even fancy, but it's really quite simple to pull together, 30 minutes from start to finish. Given that temps are reaching 90 degrees today, you could eat it chilled with a dollop of Greek yogurt or creme fraiche, with a crisp salad (that includes salty ham and/or a soft-cooked egg!) and welcome spring in style.

Recipe for Asparagus Soup with Pecans & Brown Butter at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Braise a pot of beans one day, eat well for the next several. It's the laziest, most delicious way to fill a week with food that I can imagine.

Day 1 eat a bowlful of beans, on their own or alongside a roast or spooned over rice.

Day 2 fry some beans until crispy and top with sauteed greens and a poached egg.

Day 3 puree some of the cold beans with garlic, fresh lemon juice, and olive oil and eat the spread with chips or smeared generously on grilled bread.

Day 4 puree some of the warm beans with chicken or vegetable stock and eat piping hot as soup, topped with crispy Brussels sprouts and toasted walnuts (fry sliced Brussels in hot olive oil/butter combination).

Your ideas? Share them!

The soup pictured is made with chickpeas, although the foolproof recipe - via Cafe Levain chef Adam Vickerman - is written for white beans. His technique works for whatever beans you like, so experiment away! (Leftover beans freeze beautifully, by the way.)

Original recipe for Braised White Beans at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

Despite our first frost, there are still plenty of tomatoes kicking around! Make a double batch of this easy soup and freeze it for a mid-winter's treat. Or eat it all hot from the pot, which is a good plan too. I make this soup all season long by roasting tomatoes as I pick them, stashing them in the fridge, then at week's end simmering it all into a batch of soup. You could freeze batches of roasted tomatoes as well, see mid-winter's treat mentioned above.

It's always great fun to enjoy tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich so if that's what you're in the mood for - back-to-school and chilly nights and such - skip the croutons and cream and grill away with cheese and butter. Slide a slice of tomato or a smear of tomato jam into the middle of the sandwich for a vertically integrated tomato explosion. Killer.

I left the cream in the version pictured, then fried up socca (chickpea flour pancakes) to eat as a warm (gluten-free) flatbread with my soup. Bits of crispy sage, a sprinkle of garlic scape salt, lots of freshly ground black pepper, and an extra drizzle of olive oil made for a fast treat, one of my very favorites.

Recipe for Roasted Tomato Soup at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

I had a blast chatting fall soups on Twin Cities Live this week! I specifically talked about Coconut Curry Sweet Corn Soup, but also brought along Pozole (pork braised with chiles and hominy) and a Chicken Vegetable Soup that's pretty much the perfect post-Thanksgiving soup (obviously made with turkey not chicken - please forgive me for mentioning Thanksgiving this early in September...).

It's nice to serve the Pozole with freshly fried tortilla chips. Then again, everything is nice with freshly fried tortilla chips.

It was fun for me to look back at my Farmily post for the Chicken Vegetable Soup recipe. We've had so many delicious times at my aunt Mary & uncle Bruce's farm!

Recipes for all three soups at Twin Citites Live.

Swimming in tomatoes yet? Even if not, make this gorgeous gazpacho anyhow - it's one of my very favorite versions of everyone's favorite summer treat.

Recipe for Gazpacho at Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine Magazine.

Hello from my (ridiculously brief) summer vacation in East Hampton. The only reason I'm posting a recipe while on vacation is that the local produce out here is so astonishing that I'm inspired to cook here more than I am at home. As much as the area is known for spiffy homes, those homes are separated by farms and farm stands bursting with glorious peaches, grapes, melons, vegetables, tomatoes, and berries. The sweet corn in particular haunts my beachy dreams with its caviar-pop sweetness.

As an added bonus, the fish scene is as fresh as the fashion. Every summer, my father-in-law makes us his famous crab cakes, a recipe I've already shared, so this year I settled on making up a crab and sweet corn chowder. It's not difficult to put your hands on good lump crab meat in Minnesota (Coastal Seafoods sells it, for instance), and Lord knows we know good sweet corn right exactly now. Work in some of the fresh herbs overgrowing your garden, serve wearing high heels alongside a plate of perfectly ripe tomatoes, and call it August, Hamptons-in-Minnesota style.

Recipe for Crab & Sweet Corn Chowder at TC Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

And oh, congratulations chef Sameh Wadi (Saffron, World Street Kitchen) for his win at the Minneapolis Farmers Market Country Chef Challenge this past Saturday! He and chef Jack Riebel (Butcher and the Boar) faced off with fresh-and-fabulous items quickly gathered at the market. I was a lucky, lucky judge, along with Lee Dean, food editor at the Star Tribune, and Matt Brickman and Jamie Yuccas, weekend anchors at WCCO-TV.

Jack Riebel's luscious beer cheese soup with tomatoes, chiles, maple-glazed bacon, fried croutons.

Sameh Wadi's stunning tomato salad with smoked tomato vinaigrette and raspberries (top) and fragrant trout tagine with squash and sweet corn.

Not a bad way to kick off the weekend, ha! I went from the market to the airport. Whee! Nice.

Notice how both chefs featured the gorgeous tomatoes flooding the markets right now. If you're looking for new (as well as tried-and-true) ways to use the tomatoes in your garden or at the market (like the gorgeous tomato jam pictured!), join chef Scott Pampuch and me for the last class in our Provisions series at Kitchen in the Market. This Thursday night we will be talking and eating tomatoes and berries: Jams, syrups, freezing, sauces, preserving in oil, on and on and on. We'll share tasty cocktails and a delicious meal as we chat and learn. Join us!

You can whip up a batch of this simple, gorgeous soup any time because frozen peas are quite lovely when pureed.

But as fresh peas come into the market, make it then too, and enjoy the essence of spring, garnished with fresh mint and chives, cold from the fridge.

Recie for Pea-and-Parsnip Vichysoisse at Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine Magazine.

Man oh man oh man do I miss matzoh ball soup! It used to be a bit of a joke in my household because my husband is Jewish, and doesn't like matzoh balls, and I am not, and could eat 10 of them in one sitting.

Not kidding.

While I couldn't dig into these myself (gluten), my tasters adored their light, lovely texture. The broth is rich. There is schmaltz in those beauties, the only way to go for a rich chicken flavor. The finish of fresh dill brightens the whole.

Oh!

Matzoh Ball Soup at Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine Magazine.

I am obsessed with food writer MFK Fisher (1908-1992).

No one writes about food more sensually, with as much humor, and common sense, all together, and I can't get enough. I took her book With Bold Knife and Fork, published in 1969, with me on vacation last week and was highlighting so many passages on the plane that my husband suggested I perhaps highlight the parts I wasn't interested in.

One whole page I highlighted includes the recipe below and the following introduction to it: "For fun, here is another way to serve a more impressive buffet, either stand up or with small tables where people can sit with their plates and/or mugs. A good white wine is fine with it, and a fruit compote afterward - cookies with that, and coffee, and of course crusty bread or crisp buttered toast with the soup.

This is a fairly easy and entertaining meal to assemble. It tastes fresh and tempting, and seems to please people. It can be developed, up or down, but for myself I like it to remain simple, with things hot and well seasoned, or chilled, according to their natures."

I made a double-batch of chicken stock on Sunday, then served the soup on Monday night to my dear and marvelously food-loving friends Ana Scofield, Rudy Maxa, Debbie Williams, and Stuart Williams. A couple of years ago I spent three days making cassoulet for them and I think they enjoyed this meal just as much if not more than the cassoulet (which was good). It might have been the ridiculous number of bottles of wine we opened, but I don't think so.

Don't skip the "flavored lightly with curry if wished." I actually added a particularly nutmeg-y garam masala to Cedar Summit Cream and it basically made the whole dish (nutmeg, cream, and chicken are delicious together). And no surprise here, but the chicken broth needs to be the real deal, rich and salty, without too much of its fat skimmed away. Make a double batch, like I did, then use some of it to cook the rice. Freeze any extra for a future quick dinner.

MFK Fisher's recipe for A Chicken Soup Supper at Twin Cities Taste/Minnesota Monthly Magazine.

It will get cold again, it will! And when it does, make this decadently beefy, cheesy soup.

Recipe for Zuppa Valdostana at Andrew Zimmern's Kitchen Adventures/Food & Wine Magazine.