Food Blogs at 3am

I fell asleep too early and now am up in the middle of the night. I tried going into the studio but stopped to check out recipes for all the lovely things I just bought at the Greenmarket now: ramps, asparagus, new potatoes, fiddlehead ferns. Then I found this: Orangette, an outstanding blog about her personal gastronomy stories. There are beautiful entries about and recommendations for France and I love her recipe for asparagus vinaigrette (I made something similar tonight for dinner.) All I can think about is cooking well this week. Last night for dinner, I made a lovely salad with all the beautiful vegetables mentioned above. It was so good, we couldn't believe it:
Bonbon Oiseau's Really Springy Potato Salad
tiny new potatoes
fiddlehead ferns or fresh green beans
asparagus
ramps or scallions
dijon mustard
good olive oil
sea salt
shallot
cracked pepper
1 1/2 lemon
fresh herbs like chives, marjoram, thyme, parsley or whatever you like.

1. Boil tiny new potatoes in salted water for about 12 minutes or until just tender. Strain with a slotted spoon and reserve the water for fiddleheads.
2. Blanche the fiddlehead ferns (or green beans) in the boiling salted potato water for 1 or 2 minutes (to clean them, soak in water, take off the papery brown stuff, cut the tough stalk andmake sure there is no more dirt)
3. Clean ramps by soaking a few rounds in a bowl of cold water. Cut off just the root and remove any crappy looking upper leaves. Clean asparagus as well.
4. Give them a light spray or coating of olive oil and sea salt.
5. Heat up your grill or a grill pan, and grill asparagus and ramps (or scallions) until tender. If you don't have a grill or grill pan you can just sautée I think.
6. Create the vinaigrette meanwhile in a bowl large enough that will fit all the vegetables later.
slice the shallot thin, cut the lemons in half and squeeze over the shallot, add a pinch of sea salt and a teaspoon of dijon mustard and chopped fresh herbs. Stir with s fork and slowly whisk in enough good olive oil to emulsify. Add some pepper to taste.
7. Last add the warm potatoes, either sliced and peeled or whole and not peeled or any combination of that. Then add the fiddleheads or green beans. When the asparagus and ramps are done on the grill and just charred and blistered nicely, chop them into 1 inch pices and add to the salad, gently tumbling with a spoon.
If you want a little last minute color, add some grape tomatoes cut in half. You can also add a quartered medium or hard boiled egg which is really nice as well.
Sometimes I serve this kind of salad on baby arugula if I have it but it's great as well as is.
I'll take a picture of it later.

Pictures above via Orangette.