Spring pasta with salmon and sugar snap peas--and a look back on an independent year

A year ago last week was my last day as a wage slave. My plan had been to go out on my own and start a food blog and share my passion for seasonal and local food; the future was grand, rosy, exciting. After years of feeling stuck in jobs that didn't seem to appreciate all that I had to offer and were leaving all my brilliance and skills on the table, I was going to get out on my own and put all that smart and talented out there. (And I was going to get my house in order, get in shape, and about a dozen other things.)  

Well, I started a freelance career as an editor, proofreader, and writer, and I started a food blog. I quit some bad habits. I ran a lot. Some portions of my house got clean--for a while. But only now do I begin to understand how differently I need to think about my work, to plan my life, to organize my time. Only now do I realize several hundred thousand food bloggers are out there, sharing their passion, and doing it with way prettier pictures and often with far more graceful prose. Only now do I realize that, yeah, I am smart and talented, but a lot of people are smart and talented, and many are way more trained and knowledgeable than I am. Ouch.

So those were some lessons: I wasn't nearly as good and smart as I thought. I wasn't nearly as passionate about food as I thought. Finding clients wasn't so easy, especially after the funding for my first big one dried up. There are always going to be people who are more talented, more committed, less diffused over multiple priorities. Less confused really. A heck of a lot more focused and driven.  

As you can imagine, that hurt. Especially the part about not being as good and smart as I thought I was. Yeah, that stung.

But it was an honest lesson, a real lesson. I wouldn't say I am humbler now, but I am gaining some clarity and perspective. I am clearing away some imposed rules, some imposed ways of thinking, some imposed parameters for beauty. And that's good, because I get to try and start fresh, to see with new eyes, to start to remember the first look and feel and smell of creativity, what that was like, so many years ago when the block of clay first hit the table.

And all I really meant to do tonight was share a recipe for pasta with sugar snap peas and salmon, and here I am, off on this tangent. Oh well. Here's how to make the pasta. It's really good: light, fresh, pretty in green and pink, with a nice crisp crunch from the peas--everything you'd ever want in a spring pasta. So get thee to the farmer's market and find some sweet crunchy sugar snaps!  

Pasta with salmon and sugar snap peas

• 12 oz. salmon fillets (whatever's in season, or wildcaught frozen and defrosted)
• 1 lb pasta (I used rombi in this recipe)
• 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
• 1 Tbsp finely chopped shallots
• 3 spring onions, green tops removed, sliced thinly
• 2 cups sugar snap peas, ends and strings removed
• juice from a half lemon
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1/2 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt, pepper, dried thyme

1. Cook the pasta according to package instructions. (Start boiling the pasta about the same time you start the fish so they finish at the same time.)
2. Rinse the salmon fillets in cold water, dry them with paper towels, and salt and pepper them. Prepare your produce (shallots, spring onions, and sugar snap peas).
3. Melt the butter over medium heat in a large deep pan.
4. When the butter bubbles and browns slightly, place the salmon fillets in the pan. Sprinkle the lemon juice all over the fillets. Let them cook for 1-2 minutes, and turn them over to cook for another minute on the other side. Take them out of the pan, put them on a plate tented with foil (keeps them warm). 
5. Add the shallots and the spring onions to the pan, cook until they soften (about 2 minutes). 
6. Add the sugar snap peas to the pan, let them cook for 2 minutes. 
7. Add the heavy cream and the Dijon mustard to the pan. Let the sauce cook until it thickens (about 2 minutes). Season with salt, pepper, and thyme to taste. 
8. Add the cooked pasta to the sauce in the pan and mix it all together. Turn off the heat. 
9. Removing the skin, break the salmon into flaky pieces and mix them into the pasta.
10. Eat! Enjoy! Even my five-year old liked this:

Where are the spring goodies? I've waited, haven't I?

In May, two of the farmer's markets closest to me will be opening up again, and I can't wait. Hopefully I will finally get some of the goodies I have been waiting so anxiously for, in particular, asparagus and strawberries.  Mark Bittman just posted a chart of various methods of cooking asparagus with some delectable variations. (Actually the graphic posted with the article would make a great poster: Get on it, NYT.) I am anxious to try at least a few of those variations, especially steamed with brown butter (I mean, it's butter, c'mon) and, of course, roasted with bacon. (I could go on all day about bacon, but I will try to restrain myself. I mean, seriously though, bacon...oh yeah, I was going to restrain myself.) I've got another favorite recipe for asparagus that came from the April 2001 issue of Bon Appetit magazine that involves roasting the asparagus and serving it with crumbled goat cheese, crumbled bacon, some lemon zest, and a drizzle of olive oil. So good. (You can find a more detailed recipe here.)

And then, of course, strawberries will be coming in soon. I finally had to cave and buy some organic strawberries shipped all the way here from California to eat with breakfast tomorrow morning (yes, yes, yes, I have decided to be ridiculous / have some fun and try to have crumpets and tea with strawberries and clotted cream to celebrate the royal wedding). My son (four) and I shared a few before dinner, and they were good, but definitely missing that otherworldly, almost savory quality that local, roadside-stand strawberries have. They were pretty though and not too big. The best strawberries are always small. (In fact, those giant strawberries that you sometimes see in the grocery store are octaploids, which means they have eight sets of chromosomes. That's why they get so big, but they are never so tasty.)

While waiting for the spring deliciousness to become abundant at the supermarket, I continue to work on depleting my freezer and pantry. Today's experiment was with red quinoa, a grain that I have never tried before in any form, but I thought that Heidi Swanson of the blog 101 Cookbooks might have some guidance for me, and indeed she did. I found this recipe, which I decided to riff on using the ingredients that I had at home. Instead of asparagus and walnuts, I dug a small piece of pork tenderloin out of the freezer, defrosted it, sliced it as thin as I could and marinated it in a combination of soy sauce, honey, lemon juice, garlic, ginger, dried lemongrass, one piece of star anise, black pepper, and coriander (the last four or five ingredients were sort of tossed in there with an attitude like, well, that's kind of Asian-y, right? I am afraid I am not at all expert with Asian flavors). Then, while cooking the quinoa according to package directions (it takes little longer than the time it takes to cook parboiled rice), I sliced carrots into matchsticks and an onion into slivers, stir-fried the veg in a wok with just canola oil, put that aside and stir-fried the meat, and finally put it all together. I served the stir-fry with the quinoa as a replacement for rice, for which it served its purpose adequately. To be honest, the flavor of the quinoa was pretty nondescript to me, nearly as bland as parboiled rice. The smell of the quinoa was a bit stronger, almost greener (not entirely in a pleasant way), however the little snap of the grains between my teeth was pleasant and kind of addictive. I don't love it, but I will probably try it again.