There’s been a lot of talk about asparagus and the lack thereof on our part this spring. With Monday marking the first day of summer, we’re officially past the peak season. Last year we were fortunate to discover asparagus at Midtown in only week four of the market season. We were hopeful for similar this year, but asparagus stalks never came. So hungry we were for this spring treat, we visited the St. Paul Farmers Market as Tom revealed in his prayerful post to the green goddess. As you can see, we found a little more than just (perfect) asparagus that Sunday after a light shopping day at Midtown the day before:

On another occasion, we resorted to buying our asparagus at the Wedge, which Tom was careful to note here. Now, on the verge of July, we’ve officially called off the search. As we learned from a fellow market-goer, the frosts that followed the unusual warm weather we were treated with in early spring dashed any hopes Midtown Farmers Market had for an asparagus vendor.

We did, however, miss sharing with you what we brought home from the market’s fifth Saturday. Thanks to a new crop of t-shirts from new-to-Minneapolis vendors PlantWorn, Tom took home the Asparagus Clump t-shirt at left below:

PlantWorn’s asparagus t-shirt is part of a series the duo is developing around vegetables. Kohlrabi preceded the asparagus and continues to be a part of the many designs PlantWorn brings along to Saturday markets in Midtown and Northeast Minneapolis.

I’m curious to see if the series continues and what market produce might inspire future designs. In the mean time, we’re enjoying our asparagus—and wearing it too.

Midtown Farmers Market continues to provide. Carrots were a welcome new addition this week, bringing fresh color and sweet, early season flavor to the table. I’m looking forward to how this crop will inspire Tom’s cooking in the coming days.

I’m fully aware of how empty my early farmers market boosterism sounds: “Really, even though you’ll only be able to buy a pint of strawberries and a head of lettuce, it’s totally worth making the trip to the market! Just think what you might find!” Okay, Tom. Whatever.

Well I’m happy to say those weeks are definitively over! As of last weekend, the first Saturday market in June, the market has finally hit its full stride. I could barely contain myself as I went from stall to stall, seizing on the fresh — and small in a cute way — vegetables: Chard! Snap peas! Garlic! New potatoes! Kale! Friseé! Basil! Leeks! Rhubarb! Strawberries! Finally, the makings of a feast.

Markets like these — rife with fresh and tender vegetables — allow me to make my favorite post-farmers market lunch: produce, steamed or blanched, with homemade mayonnaise, hummus, or any other sauce you like to dip them in. I did cheat and supplement the Midtown new potatoes and snap peas with asparagus from The Wedge (but hey, they’re my year round farmers market).

All that and I barely made a dent in the week’s haul. There will be plenty more meals this week derived almost entirely from market produce. The fun is just beginning.

Saint Albert was almost not a saint at all, thanks to the discovery during his beatification process of extensive studies of the occult: black magic. Among his writings on the subject was found a recipe for a depilatory potion that required burning a large frog whole and mixing the ashes with water then spreading the mixture on the to-be-hairless area. In the end though, Albert did earn his sainthood and luckily for us the Catholic parish in Seward bearing his name hasn’t taken any cooking cues from their patron; instead of burning it they prepare some of the finest fried and baked fish available for Lent, served for your convenience in two fast-moving lines. It’s the church fish-fry of the season and after the great time we had last year, Martha and I were not going to miss it.

Last year, we came on the last Friday of the Fish Fry’s operation, and it was crowded: line-wrapping-all-the-way-around-the-room crowded. This year we were a little more on the ball and showed up the second Friday of Lent. The room was certainly still full, but the line was not nearly as long and we were able to purchase our tickets ($10 for adults) and get our fish and sides in short order. So my advice to anyone thinking of visiting the great Saint Albert’s but intent on skipping the line is to get there sooner than later, before people realize Lent is almost over. Then again, waiting in line can be pretty fun; there are lots of interesting people to talk to.

The Catholic church sometimes gets a bad rep for being conservative, reactionary, even regressive. But it’s also rarely fair to judge individual parishes by the policy of the church as a whole, and without intending to direct any specific critcisms of St. Albert’s I’d like to commend them for their very environmentally-friendly reusable ticket system. I’d like to think I got the same ticket as last year!

There are a lot of reasons to make it down to Saint Albert’s for the fish fry: the always friendly volunteers who do everything from serving your food to clearing your plate, the irrepressible wit and humor of Fr. Joe Gillespie who works the crowd for the evening, microphone in hand, the bingo. But ultimately a fish fry is about the food. Given how much I enjoyed it last year, I was glad to see that the menu was unchanged from last year: in order there was: cheesy mashed potatoes, fried Alaskan Pollack, baked Alaskan Pollack, meatless spaghetti, cole slaw, rolls and of course tartar sauce and lemon wedges. Immediately after the savory line there’s a whole table of desserts to tempt you, but I’d recommend maintaining one free hand to pick up a glass of lemonade on your way to find a seat. You can always go back for dessert. And more fish.

The food prompted no complaints from me: who can object to lemon spritzed fried fish with tartar sauce? As with last year, though, the standouts were the sides; particularly, the meatless spaghetti which from its appearance you would expect to be as saccharine as any jar of Ragú but is actually somehow meaty and deeply flavored. I don’t know if this sauce is some secret church recipe or if it just comes out of a different can than I was expecting. Maybe it’s black magic. Frankly I don’t want to know. I just know I like it.

With two years under our belts at Saint Albert the Great’s, we’re starting to feel like regulars (though I can tell we’d need quite a few more years to meet others’ expectations for that title). Given how little time we spent in line this year, we might just be back before Easter. We’ll definitely be back next year, when I’m hoping for the addition of St. Albert’s famous blackened frogs’ legs to the food on offer. Does frog count as meat?

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday. This was the second year in a row in which I was cooking in isolation from my extended family in Michigan since relocating to Minnesota. I miss having my whole family together and all their different contributions to the meal. On the other hand, cooking in Minneapolis for a small crowd, I have complete control over the meal. This satisfies the control-freak in me, and also allows a bit of flexibility about how I cook the bird.

The bird in question arrived from Clancey’s Meats & Fish last Monday. I was wide-grinningly excited when our turkey — which had never seen the inside of a freezer — showed up under Martha’s arm; I immediately set about dismembering it. Originally, my plan was to cook the bird whole, in search of that classic Norman Rockwell moment. But after reading Kenji Lopez Alt’s enlightening “Turkey Stuffed Turkey” article I could not resist taking my turkey apart. It just makes so much sense: the legs and the breasts are two different kinds of meat that demand different treatments — they are done at different temperatures — and, best of all, if you cut the legs and breasts off, you have the whole carcass to make turkey stock in advance, to be held at the ready for all your stuffing/dressing and gravy needs.

After dismantling the turkey, I salted the legs and thighs and refrigerated them overnight. The next day, they were ready to confit in a crockpot with plenty of olive oil, bay leaves, thyme, orange zest, peppercorns and juniper berries. Before removing the breasts, I carefully took the majority of the turkey’s skin off in one piece — I think Hannibal Lecter would have been proud. The breasts and skin were reserved for Thanksgiving day. Meanwhile, I roasted the rest of the carcass and boiled it down into stock. The copious amount of bones made available by cutting the turkey apart meant that I got a thick, gelatinous stock.

For reference, a ten pound free range turkey produces about 2 ½# of white meat. I felt like a mad scientist rolling the two breasts together and wrapping them in their own skin per Lopez Alt’s instructions. The technique worked out really well; the meat cooked very evenly and the skin even managed to adhere to the meat, no Activa required. Go figure.

My quest to use all parts of the turkey resulted in the surprise best dish of the evening, a turkey liver pâté. After soaking the turkey’s liver in milk for two hours to leech out some supposed metallic flavors, I sauteed it in butter along with some shallots. This I ground to a paste in my food processor along with thyme, turkey meat left over from the stock, salt, lots of black pepper, some juniper berries and a bit of heavy cream. After baking this mixture in a water-bath in a 300°F oven for an hour I cooled it and refrigerated it overnight. The result was amazing. I have been dabbling in terrines, pâtés and other potted meats for well over a year now. The results, while always pretty good — how can you go wrong with potted meat? — were always missing something, or featuring too much. Either I have learned enough or the stars were just aligning right for this Thanksgiving: the pâté was creamy, rich, slightly gamy and very peppery. Great with mustard, pickled green beans and olives. Not how I’ve usually started off Thanksgiving, but possibly a new tradition!

One can hardly have Thanksgiving appetizers without Thanksgiving cocktails. Martha found the recipe we used on Apartment Therapy: 1½ oz rye whiskey (Wild Turkey, of course), ½ oz triple sec (substituted for clear curaçao), 2 oz apple cider, 1 tsp simple syrup and a couple of cranberries for garnish. Changing every “oz” to “cup” we successfully octupled the recipe with enough for everyone to enjoy two.

As for the rest of the meal, it was more or less what you would expect. Mashed potatoes, stuffing, fresh cranberry sauce, sauteed green beans with lemon, roasted parnsips, carrots and brussels sprouts, roasted turkey breast and turkey leg confit and plenty of gravy to cover it all.

In some ways Thanksgiving is a stupid meal: nobody can make all these dishes perfectly at the same time. We’d be better off focusing on just a couple and having a really great meal. But it’s Thanksgiving, it happens only once a year, and frankly, nobody expects it to be perfect. That’s why there’s gravy.