Feature
Cooking with Spring Ingredients
The Latin name for this fruit, praecoquum, means literally “early ripening peach.”
These edible thistles contain an acid called cynarin that makes everything taste sweet after eating them.
Asparagus is a diuretic and you may notice a distinctive odor in your urine after eating it.
The first carrots were cultivated in Afghanistan, and were more purplish-red than orange.
Chives freeze and rot easily, so store them in the warmest part of the refrigerator.
Favas were the only bean known to Europe until the discovery of the New World.
The unfurled fronds of young ferns are a popular ingredient in Indonesian cooking.
Green garlic is pulled from the ground before the actual garlic bulb forms.
New potatoes are freshly dug potatoes that have not reached maturity and have never been kept in storage.
Peas were originally very starchy; gardeners cultivated the sweet green garden pea during the Renaissance.
This perennial stalk-vegetable of Asian descent has toxic leaves that shouldn’t be eaten.
Wild strawberries were so plentiful in America that there was limited garden cultivation of the fruit until the late 18th century.
Tarragon was once thought to ward off serpents and dragons and to heal snakebites.
White asparagus is grown without exposure to sunlight, which would turn the stalks green.
If we're being strictly correct fiddlehead ferns are un-unfurled, or furled, as it were, since unfurled would refer to something that was rolled and is now extended...and fiddleheads are decidedly curled.
Good story, though! I for one can't wait to get me some rhubarb.
I'm going to make the pea pancakes. A great alternative for those of us who don't eat much grain.
This is a nice article. But you ruined it with the unappetizing information on asparagus. I think most readers already know about the effect of asparagus on some people's body chemistry. We don't need to be reminded of it when reading a cooking article. Surely you could find a different factoid about asparagus -- something pleasant and appetizing.
Um, question.... what is green garlic. I thought those were green onoins. I have never heard of, or seen green garlic. Can anyone help me with my confusion!