KEY POINTS:
Spring is a fantastic time of the year for food, flirting and fun, and you can celebrate with your friends right now.
Here are five ways to put a spring in your culinary step:
#1 Gorge on new-season asparagus - any colour you like - just eat it like mad. These delectable shoots from the lily family are at their peak from now until December. Highly prized since antiquity, when the ancient Greeks gathered the young shoots of asparagus from the wild, asparagus reached its zenith when the French made special tall pots to cook them in and ceramic dishes to serve them in. The best way to cook them is in these asparagus pots so the stems are cooked and the tips are still slightly crunchy. Recipe tip: make asparagus rolls - spread the bread with horseradish and fry in olive oil.
#2 Fresh spring goat cheeses - spring milk is sweeter than the rest of the year and the cheeses reflect this. We are making a lot more goat cheese now and the soft, slightly lemony, floral flavour is heavenly just on its own on toast drizzled with honey.
If you wish to cook with it, soft goat cheese is very good in tarts, souffles, omelettes, fritters, biscuits, pancakes and even spread on lamb chops just before serving, adding a squirt of lemon juice.
#3 Spring lamb used to be eaten in New Zealand only in the spring and it remains a succulent delicacy.If you can get baby milk-fed lamb, it's even better.
To cook it you just simply roast it as you would suckling pig. The flavour is so subtle, it cannot be covered with anything distracting except maybe lemon thyme and olive oil.
My favourite way of cooking a leg of lamb is to cook it until pink in the middle then slice it from top to bottom rather than across. That way everyone will get a perfect slice with fat on the outside, well cooked at the edge and pink at the bone.
#4 Globe artichokes - do not give in to haste with artichokes, they will not reward you. Eat them with your fingers - hard steel knives and forks clash with the cynarin acid in artichokes, making them bitter.
I like them well cooked so I can undress them leaf by leaf, but I also like them al dente the way the Italians eat them. They break the leaves off uncooked then halve the hearts and fry them.
#5 Risotto - this is a great spring dish, because you can throw lots of spring ingredients into it such as broad beans, peas, mint, spring garlic, seafood, baby leeks, fennel and lemon juice.
Choose arborio or carnaroli rice and make a delicious creamy risotto by gradually adding your stock and/or wine and stirring to release the starch from the grain. The rice will thicken into a velvety mass while still retaining bite.
- Detours, HoS