Welcome to our very first From Dirt To Dinner recipe carnival! This week we are celebrating asparagus - yum! It’s in season right now, it’s super-healthy, and it’s great stuff, especially when fresh and local. Not to mention that doesn’t asparagus just tell you that Spring is really here?

So, ever since Kate and I decided we’d start with asparagus, I had big plans to try out a recipe I found in Local Flavors for Asparagus and Wild Mushroom Bread Pudding. I was extra excited about it because, like most recipes from a seasonal cookbook like this, everything listed was an item that would be found in season as all the others. And so it called for “Green Garlic,” also known as Spring Garlic, which I’d never heard of. But it turns out it is essentially un-matured garlic that is harvested in the spring, as opposed to fully mature garlic that has formed cloves that would be harvested mid-summer. So this would mean I’d have a great excuse to pull out some of my garlic that I planted in the fall and see how it’s doing!

The thing is though, it’s been so dang hot this week.  I mean really, who wants to bake a bread pudding for an hour in a house that’s already 80 degrees? And then who would want to eat it? Not me, so I had to come up with a back-up plan.

Also on the menu this week I had planned to try these ricotta dumplings I saw in the May issue of Everyday Food. They’re like gnocchi, which both my kids adore, but they’re not made with potatoes. This would be my first attempt at making pasta from scratch, a great way to stay local if you have access to local flour (pretty sure I would not be successful if I went in search of locally produced potato gnocchi . . .). So, why not document my first pasta-making adventure, right? Right.

I already had all the stuff for the Bread Pudding, including some shiitake mushrooms, because that’s what I could find from a local source, so I just looked up recipes for gnocchi with asparagus and mushrooms. This was really just to make sure my idea wasn’t insane and that I wouldn’t be the very first person in history to try and put these foods together. I wasn’t - Gnocchi With Asparagus and Mushrooms - and so I figured I’d sort of loosely follow this recipe (I was going to use the green garlic instead of onion and leave out the ham, among other changes), along with Martha’s Ricotta dumplings recipe, when putting together my meal.

So let’s begin!

First, we gotta go harvest some green garlic from the yard. Here’s my garlic patch I planted last fall. Pretty much every clove I put in came up. I think it will technically be ready for harvest in mid-summer.

So I needed to find one whose greens had not yet started to brown. How about this guy? See, it’s just like a big scallion and it is used in a similar way, except you don’t use the darker green parts. So maybe it’s more like a small leek. Anyway, supposedly it is much more subtle in flavor than mature garlic, and perhaps most importantly, it’s available now and from my own yard!

All righty, so here are my veggies.

1 green garlic from the yard

a bunch of asparagus I found at the farmer’s market

a few ounces of Shiitake mushrooms that I found at Whole Foods and were listed as local (58 miles, I think). If you’ve never noticed that before, be aware that many grocery stores (and obviously Whole Foods) draw attention to local items now. So here they are - before:

and after:

Ok, that’s ready. Let’s make some pasta. Here’s my stuff for the Ricotta Dumplings:

I need 1 1/2 cups ricotta cheese. I’m using some made by Natural By Nature, an awesome dairy located in Lancaster. I believe they were specifically mentioned in Nina Planck’s Real Food, as a matter of fact, because they are one of few larger dairies that produces organic products from grass fed cows. I’m really fortunate because I can get their stuff either through my buying club or, in a pinch (as in, when I totally flake and forget to place my order the week before), from my area Whole Foods.

1 Egg yolk - I get our eggs through our buying club

about 1/3 cup grated parmesan or pecorino cheese - I honestly don’t remember where this one came from. Sorry.

Zest of one lemon - I used this lemon for something the other night and just happened to hold onto it. I highly doubt it came from around here, unfortunately. I still have a hard time letting go of certain things . . .

Ok, gonna mix up the above in a big ol’ bowl.

Then we’re gonna sift in 1/2 cup flour and fold it together. Then turn it out onto a floured counter and sift another 1/2 cup flour over the dough. Then we’ll knead that together until it’s all incorporated and comes together. There’s a note here in the recipe saying not to overwork the dough…ok, now I’m getting nervous.

I get a lot of my flours through my buying club as well, from Daisy Mill, which specializes in organic flours. Here are some definitions of buying clubs and CSA’s, by the way. We participate in a CSA during the growing season (Lancaster Farm Fresh Coop), and then on top of that order individual products through the optional buying club (Four Season Harvest) through the year for meats, dairy, eggs, flour, etc. During the CSA season I can pick it all up together, once a week, all nicely packed up for me and ready to go from the patio of a nearby house.

Done! Booyah!

Ok, now we’re going to break this into 4 pieces and roll out each piece into a log “about 3/4 inches thick and 20 inches long.” Um . . . ok. 20 inches is like, really long . . . I’m gonna roll it until I worry that it’s going to break, particularly because I almost certainly “overworked it.” How about that? Then we’re going to cut the supposedly nearly two-foot log into 1/2 inch pieces.

Here’s a lovely photo I tried to take of the picture from the recipe:

And here’s what I’ve got:

Not bad, except for the fact that in this photo my 1/2 inch pieces look more like they’re freaking biscuits due to some trick of perspective. I swear they’re not. Admittedly, that log ain’t 20 inches long (that’s what she said…sorry…) but these are also not baseball dumplings.

Now we’re going to cook these puppies in boiling water for around 2-4 minutes. They’ll start to float, and I pulled them out a minute or so later.

Ok, moving on. Let’s sautee some green garlic in a little olive oil (um, most definitely not local - I’m really not sure how to work out the no-local-olive-oil issue. I wonder if there’s a good alternative) and a little butter (again, Natural By Nature).

Then add mushrooms and cook for a few minutes. Heck, let’s throw some white wine in there too. Have you ever gone wrong with adding white wine? Exactly.

Ok, now I’m going to add the cooked and drained dumplings, the asparagus, a little half and half (yep, Natural By Nature), and a tad of water to cook the asparagus.

Bringing that to a boil and cooking for a few minutes, just until the asparagus becomes a little tender. Also gonna add some sea salt and some fresh ground pepper.

And voila! Put a little fresh grated parm on there too!

Wow, that photo is more than just a little ugly. I tell you what though, it tastes pretty good. What really works with these two recipes together is the lemon zest! It goes so nicely with the asparagus (lemon/citrus and asparagus is a pretty common pairing - asparagus is coming into season as citrus fruits are going out) and both stand out more. Whereas I served the same dumplings to my kids with their normal “favorite sauce.” and they didn’t even notice a lemon flavor.

The texture of the dumplings is also really good. I thought they’d be too soft, just because I’ve never cooked fresh pasta before, I suppose, but they have the right firmness and they’re not gooey at all.

So there you have it. I think it was all local except for that lemon, that darned lemon, the olive oil, the salt, and possibly that parmesan. Oh, and my spontaneous splash of wine. But, on a positive note, I did get to incorporate local ingredients from a variety of places, including a grocery store, my farmer’s market, my buying club, and even my own yard, the best of all things local, in my opinion.

**********************************************************************************

Want to join us in this little endeavor? We’d be delighted.

If you haven’t already, please read the brief description of From Dirt To Dinner, which will tell you more about what kinds of posts should be included on the link list below.

Also, please link back to this post so that your readers can participate too. And by all means, grab that lovely button code up there to the right and display it in your post.

When linking up below, please be sure to paste in the address for your From Dirt To Dinner post, not the address of your whole blog.