During a trip to the grocery store this week, I was stopped in my tracks by my one true harbinger of warmer days to come: the arrival of ranunculus, a darling of spring and my favorite blooms, in the floral section.
It is also, coincidentally, “false spring” here in New York, with temperatures tipping into the 60s yesterday and again next week. And although we are still three weeks out from true spring in the Northern Hemisphere, 7 p.m. sunsets are back in roughly 10 days. Not that I’m counting. (Reader, it’s the only thing getting me from one day to the next.)
Even if it’s not quite spring, I encourage you to eat as if it is: Eat as if it’s bike-shorts degrees outside, as if window boxes are bursting with daffodils, as if your market tote runneth over with asparagus and rhubarb and radishes and young lettuces.
While it might be a touch too soon for David Tanis’s gorgeous spring salad (bookmark it!), sugar snap peas are generally available year-round for Melissa Clark’s hot and sour seared tofu, though her recipe works well with any vegetable cut into small pieces. And in Ali Slagle’s crispy rice with dill and runny eggs, you can use frozen fava beans — or lima beans, or edamame — for a bit of springtime flair.
Ali’s spring barley soup and Kay Chun’s spring minestrone with kale and pasta (above) are ideal shoulder-season recipes, warming and cozy yet verdant and lively. And they’re flexible, too. If you’re not yet wowed by the asparagus in the produce aisle, add sturdy collard greens instead, or hearty edamame, or oniony leeks. Don’t skip the peas, though. They’re almost always better frozen anyway, a cheat code to spring vibes year-round.
