April is indeed the cruelest month, as it tempts us with warm weather and visions of what’s to come.
Those visions include produce that we can only remember fondly at this point, but it’s oh so close. While I appreciate what we have to work with now: the wonderful greens and mushrooms, spring onions with their crisp clean bite, I do yearn like everyone else for the first tender asparagus and snow peas or the small bites of broccoli.
Not only are they a “new” product to work with, they represent a gateway vegetable to the summer’s diversity. It constantly amazes me that a bit of green vegetable served up to us in the spring can erase some of winter’s somber greyness. There is something also about the texture, and how you want to preserve the crunch after months of soft, rich food.
That’s why oftentimes I look not to cook the green vegetables of spring but to manipulate flavor and texture in such a way as to maximize both as we shift into another season.
Without digging too deeply into the raw food movement, allow me to cherry pick a few ideas. Raw food tastes differently, in some cases better, in others not as full. Each vegetable’s flavor will be altered slightly and for each individual their preference will often determine raw or cooked.
Raw food is nutritionally better for you than cooked. Officially the science is split on that. While it’s true that overcooking vegetables and even protein can have a detrimental effect on the nutritional values, the mere cooking of the very same vegetable does not automatically deprive that item of nutritional value.
Raw food is “cleaner” than cooked is perhaps the most tenuous of the ideas floating through the discussion. While you may feel better (sometimes more superior) for eating raw, the cleanliness of your food is not tied to the preparation methods, but to the grower. If the grower is clean from start to finish than all the attributes of the specific product are clean and hence you probably will see a difference in the way you feel.
We are entering the seasons when raw food preparation is an attractive option. It’s simplistic to call it salad season as there is much more to do with the produce than just tossing it in a salad. The dishes you prepare could involve all raw products, fermented or pickled items or smoked, cooked or preserved items all in the mix. I like the idea of mixing methods as it only increases the diversity of the dish, something to consider when we’re dealing with a preparation that may take some people off guard.
The focus will be mostly on the textures of the dish and secondly on the flavors. In some cases of raw preparation we lose the ability to enhance colors (asparagus blanched and shocked properly versus raw asparagus), but in this instance it is a worthy sacrifice. The further we go into late spring and summer the easier it will be to find more color and have more colors compliment, just nature’s way of nudging us in that direction, I guess.
Let me give you a couple of quick examples of the directions you can take if you choose to go raw this spring. As I said, some of these ideas will incorporate cooked as well but the main components, the ones we’re waiting so impatiently for will be raw.
The first of the dishes would use raw asparagus. I first went raw with this years ago, and wasn’t very successful. I missed the bright green color and the moisture of blanched asparagus. I will admit that the flavor seemed more vital to me, more asparagus flavor than anything else.
When I came back to the method several years ago it was in response to a customer’s request for a raw vegetable salad. Shaving the larger asparagus into thin, long ribbons, I was able to quickly dress the asparagus with a lemon vinaigrette, shaving rather than chopping also came in handy with red onion and local shiitake mushrooms all of which went into the same bowl as the asparagus.
There is a chemical change which occurs when heat, or an acid meets a green vegetable. It has to do with the chlorophyll present in green vegetables which at first blush turn bright green and after extended exposure will darken to olive grey.
There is a thin margin of error as we let the asparagus sit in the lemon vinaigrette. Because there is some olive oil in the vinaigrette it does provide some protection, but you can’t leave it in forever. The great thing about this salad is that it can vary with each passing vegetable.
Asparagus to broccoli to snow peas can all be part of the blend. Toss in some fresh tomato in the summer or some julienned squash and zucchini and the entire complexion of the salad can change. I often will include fresh goat cheese, shave carrot of daikon and other crisp vegetables as the texture stands out, especially with a raw preparation.
The tender new broccoli is another vegetable that lends itself to raw presentation. Not the old crudité platter from last century’s cocktail party but, but a fresh new approach that calls for slicing thin layers of the vegetable to resemble paper thin trees.
Toss these in a combination of light soy, grated garlic and ginger, rice vinegar and chilies. Combine this with crisp bok choy, sprouts, shaved carrots and raw mushroom. Make sure to let it sit for at least 15 minutes, tossing several times.
The flavors are natural together and provide color and crunch to a salad that would otherwise be conventional and bland. Whatever you chose to start with, this is then season to do it.
Spring brings us tenderness and abundant green swaths of color. We would be wise to at least experiment with the first of those vegetables and gently segue into the gazpachos, summer salads and fresh salsas coming our way in a few, short months.
John Foster is an executive chef who heads the culinary program at Sullivan University’s Lexington campus. A New York native, Foster has been active in the Lexington culinary scene and a promoter of local and seasonal foods for more than 20 years. The French Culinary Institute-trained chef has been the executive chef of his former restaurant, Harvest, and now his Chevy Chase eatery, The Sage Rabbit, in Lexington.
