The Waiting Kitchen
Cooking in the space between seasons, plus a Wild Garlic Chowder and Puntarelle Salad.
The kitchen is an odd place to hang a calendar.
My OCD-self stubbornly uses a calendar to organize my daily tasks to the nth degree, track progress toward my long-term goals, manage self-imposed deadlines, and, hopefully, avoid missing planned activities with friends. I’m not always successful, but the effort is there.
But a calendar in the kitchen feels out of place. It implies strict adherence to seasonality, and nature doesn’t function consistently from year to year. Consider asparagus. These lovely spears generally emerge from their underground world in Central Europe sometime in mid-spring. The time is not defined because there are too many variables. It is simply impossible to say, “Oh, it’s March...I should roast some asparagus.” Nevertheless, I know I can walk into my local supermarket on March 2nd and find a prominent display of asparagus at the front of the fresh food section. They will be there, right next to the out-of-season strawberries.
I may crave something Spring-like to wash away the stains of winter, but I know something doesn’t feel right when I cook to the supermarket’s schedule. The flavors won’t be fully developed. The nutrients will be lost. And by the time local asparagus season arrives in late March or early April, I will be tired of them and ready for ratatouille vegetables.
So, I wait...and pay attention to what’s in my kitchen now, what’s beginning to appear at the local farmer’s market, and what’s emerging from the thawed earth. These signals feel more reliable than what the calendar suggests.
I open the bottom drawer in my pantry to take an inventory. I have potatoes—the kind that hold their shape when cooked. Hmm...I’d better do something with them; they are showing signs of sprouting. The white onions, too, I can see dark layers beginning to form under their thin skins—a sure sign of fast approaching mold. The yellow Spanish onions look fine...they can hang out for a few more days. The garlic bulbs look okay, but I can feel some of the cloves turning soft. It’s definitely time to use them.
I know I can use these key ingredients in many different soups. Vichyssoise. Tamatar Dal. Ribollita. Chowder. Hold on... Didn’t I spot some early Italian sweet peas at the market yesterday? And didn’t I see the year’s first wild garlic pushing through a layer of dead leaves while walking along the river yesterday? Suddenly, a bowl of my spring pea and wild garlic chowder sounds like a suitable match to the unexpected warm sunshine.
I made my way through the farmer’s market and toward my favorite vendor, who specializes in bringing the latest Italian products to my more northerly location. My mind was on those fresh peas, maybe even some washed wild garlic, which would save me the trouble of foraging. As I began my mental inventory to stimulate my mind into thinking what I might make next week, I noticed how wonderful the artichokes looked. I noticed Citron, lemons from Sorrento, three different blood orange varieties, and...and in a crate, soaking in lemon water, was puntarelle.
Puntarelle...right there next to the last of the season’s blood oranges.
Puntarelle (the plural form is more commonly used) is the shoot of a specific variety of chicory (Catalogna) that forms a dense cluster of hollow, pale green spears at the heart of the plant. It belongs to the broader chicory family, which means it carries that characteristic bitter edge, though the spears are more delicate and less aggressive than relatives like radicchio or endive. The texture is crisp and watery when raw, almost like a cross between celery and fennel, and it softens only slightly when soaked in cold water. It’s a resolutely Italian ingredient, most closely associated with Roman cuisine. Its seasonal window is genuinely open for two or three weeks in late winter to early spring before the plant bolts and the spears lose their tenderness. Miss it, and you wait another year...and that kind of seasonal urgency becomes part of its character.
The idea came to me instantly...why not combine the oranges with the puntarelle? I could add some sliced fennel...and toss everything with a Verjus vinaigrette, which leans closer to a sweet-sour-spicy pickling liquid. I could feel my mouth watering. “Posso avere 500 grammi di puntarelle, per favore… e poi, quattro arance tarocco?” I suddenly asked in my somewhat broken Italian. “Ma, sicuramente,” came the answer, and suddenly, I was off with a full bag of fresh produce.
The time between seasons is full of surprises and inspiration, but patience must be part of the ingredient list. A calendar is not an accurate tool for deciding what to cook. Our eyes perform that task far better if we can remember that the season doesn’t need chasing. It needs receiving.
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Spring Pea and Wild Garlic Chowder
I like to prepare extra-vibrant, explosively tasty soups to celebrate the increasingly warmer days, using whatever the season offers. During the early days of Spring, plenty of wild garlic, fresh peas, and new potatoes are available. They blend into a vibrant green soup with subtle textural contrasts and a gentle punch of wild garlic flavor — potent enough, legend has it, to rouse a bear from hibernation.
Puntarelle and Shaved Fennel Salad
Puntarelle and shaved fennel salad is a wonderful Italian combination appearing in late winter. The dish pairs the crunchy, slightly bitter shoots of puntarelle (think chicory) with thinly sliced, crisp fennel. I chose to intertwine seasonal citrus flavors, salt-cured capers, and chopped pistachio nuts to push this salad toward Sicilian flavors. The salad is dressed with a tangy, sweet-sour vinaigrette that complements the salty, slightly bitter aromatic ingredients.
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The soup looks right up my street. Did you forage the wild garlic?
Lovely stuff Jack