A welcome taste of Spring

Spring in the Northwest is always a mixed bag. It can be sunny one minute, and hailing, snowing, or graupeling the next. This year has felt like Winter took a mulligan--measurable snow, late frosts, and chilly days. 

Despite all that, the blooming trees and tulips declare that Spring is in full swing, and Pike Place Market was full of the best of the season. 

Morels,  asparagus, and fiddleheads, oh my! My favorite produce vendor claimed that the cool weather has made for the sweetest, most delectable asparagus. I'm usually not a fan of raw asparagus--but the sample of purple asparagus he gave me supported his claim. 

I've been able to shop the market enough that I have a usual strategy: cruise the flowers, stop at the produce vendor to buy some seasonal awesomeness, go to the fish monger a couple stalls down, and loop back to pick a bouquet of flowers. The spring produce clearly deserved center stage, so I opted for some scallops & halibut cheeks from the fish guy--delectable, but mild.

A question of morels

While I had a general sense of how the ingredients might fit together, I didn't really have a plan. As it turned out, my neighbor friend was up for eating experiments and drinking wine. She's a vegetarian, so that put the morels on center stage. I had this vague idea to make a morel custard and started googling. The top two hits were: Morel Sformato and Morel Chawanmushi. The sformato was more what I was thinking, but I was intrigued by the chawanmushi. 

I made a number of modifications to the recipe, but weighed the egg & liquid so I had the recommended proportions. Some roasted & boiled hazelnuts stood in for the gingko nuts, and I made a vegetarian dashi with the dried arame, kaisou salad, and shitake mushrooms I had on hand. The recipe's claim of 15-20 minutes to cook was way off--it took at least three times longer to set. It did, however, come out luxuriously silky and delicately complex. Definitely not my usual cooking style, but totally would make again. 

It was a lovely complement to the Tablas Creek Spring 2022 selections we were tasting through. Love that they're continuing the virtual tastings and offering the samplers to non-club members through Master the World. I absolutely loved the 2020 Cote de Tablas Blanc, 2021 Patelin de Tablas Rosé, and 2019 Panoplie. The Panoplie was the best wine I've had in a while. Right out of the gate, it's drinking beautifully. The whole line up is impressive. Last time I tasted through their line-up, it felt a bit hit and miss...there are no misses here.

Spring greens

Since I didn't cook either the scallops or halibut last night, brunch was the order of the day. I continued the butter and sage theme from the chawanmushi and made an arugula-dashi sauce. 

The sauce did not thicken the way I'd hoped, but brown butter scallops with sage, arugula, and a poached egg are seriously good eats. The plating might not have been what I envisioned, but the flavors when everything mixed together were...magic. Absolutely one of the best "I'm completely winging this" meals I've put together.

Paired it with  2020 Browne Family Grenache Rosé, which is crisp and clean with a pretty floral character and some nice minerality. It countered the richness and subtlety of the dish pretty much perfectly.