It's almost June, which according to Home Gardener's Cookbook (Marjorie Page Blanchard, 1974) "is the first month when the gardener is eyed with envy." Blanchard is seriously underestimating my laziness and overestimating my ability to discern the difference between produce from a home garden and that from a grocery store, but it is true that June is the time (at least in the more northerly states) that gardeners finally have some real variety from their gardens.
Spinach is apparently plentiful in June, so the spinach artichoke roll is an option.
I like that this imagines so many possibilities for the roll: serving it filled with herb cheese as hors d'oeuvres, with creamed mushrooms and Hollandaise as a side, or with curried chicken salad for a picnic. (Not that I can really imagine trying to transport this to a picnic, but June is a month for being a little impractically dreamy.)
My very favorite vegetables--beets!-- (heavy sarcasm there) are just coming into season, and the book recommends cooking them with another of my "favorites": celery.
I guess June is such a lovely month that you have to balance it out with a salad of sugared dirt and edible dental floss so you don't risk getting too accustomed to being happy.
If you want to preserve some fresh herbs but are tired of simply drying them, there's a recipe for basil jelly.
I'm not quite sure what you'd do with such a thing, but at least making it would give the cook a sense of accomplishment. And if they gave it all away as gifts, they wouldn't have to think about how to use the stuff. Make it somebody else's problem!
And speaking of preservation and gift making, June is also the month to start a holiday gift you can work on all summer long: Tutti Frutti!
Add your strawberries and sugar to some brandy or rum now, and just keep adding fruits and sugar as the growing season progresses. By the end of the year, it should be ready to bottle and give away. (And of course, tutti frutti is always an excuse for me to link to The Devil's Rejects!)
On that happy note, I will sign off so I can walk to the grocery, buy some strawberries and fresh herbs, and pretend that they're garden fresh when I eat them in a simple salad later. That's more my speed than any of these recipes...
Impractically dreamy June. It makes me think of all those June brides who drop the down payment for a house on a wedding because it's their day and it's going to be perfect darn it. I guess that the spinach artichoke rolls are a good representation of that. They take a lot of work, are very fiddly and they probably won't turn out how you wanted them to. As a bonus, you can take them on a picnic or a potluck wedding and if they aren't stored properly you can poison a bunch of people.
ReplyDeleteI guess that there's a reason why I always thought that weddings were an overpriced, stupid hassle. That was especially evident when some friends went with the budget catering option to have people make their own sandwiches at the reception. The bread was visibly moldy. I think that some of the cheese was too. Nobody really wanted to take a chance on the meat and what may be lurking there. In retrospect a potluck may have been less dangerous than the caterers.
Wow! Somebody should have called the health department. But I guess they were preoccupied with other things, so the shitty caterers were safe.
DeleteWe all thought at very least the catering should have been free. There was also a feeling that they should have sued them, but I think that they were pretty overwhelmed by having just graduated from college and going through a wedding. Nothing like major life milestones to take it out of you.
DeleteSometimes it's more worthwhile to avoid going through a difficult and drawn-out process rather than trying to get or save money. There are a lot of ways to get money, but you can never get time back.
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