It’s cool and rainy and we walk miles along the East River. The water is gray today and moving fast. So are we, breathing in the salt air and happy that we live on an island.

On the way home, we run into friends and invite them over for an early supper. We stop for bottles of something white, dry, and cold, and then for narrow baguettes, their brittle crust kept dry underneath someone’s slicker. The rain falls harder, and we run the last block like children.

I had gone crazy for radishes this week at the Greenmarket. Of various sizes and shapes, their colors range from the palest of pinks and what is surely violet to the magenta-fade-to-white that holds its own against any ikat, and the lustrous dark red more commonly seen on peonies. I couldn’t resist: Radishes are at their best this time of year, and again in the fall. They grow quickly in cool weather, which intensifies their snap, savor, and juicy tenderness, and I am reminded of another friend, equally intense, who was inspired enough to paint them.

These radishes are so fresh they need nothing more than a rinse. I nip off the roots, trim the leaves*, and cut the larger radishes in half. No need to fuss: I heap them on a platter with the bread, cut into slices, and ramekins of sweet butter and salt. If we were sitting at a café in Paris, we would be presented with fleur de sel, which would be lovely, but what I really want now are big, crisp, airy flakes of Maldon, which remind me of other rivers, far away in Essex, England, and smaller, flintier grains of black lava salt—equally dramatic and courtesy of Sam’s sister, who bolts off to Hawaii every chance she gets.

All table radishes—as well as large, fleshy daikons and Chinese radishes, with their kaleidoscopic interiors—belong to just one species (Raphanus sativus) of the vast Brassicaceae family. When you taste several different permutations at the same time, it is easy to appreciate the differences in flavor. The paler ones before us are beautifully mild. The elongated magenta-and-white French Breakfasts are a bit spicier, but still sweet enough to belong on a tray with coffee cups and croissant crumbs.

The four of us decide, in fact, while carefully divvying up the last of the wine, that it is high time to bring back radishes—which are rich in vitamins and minerals—as a power breakfast. A peek into William Woys Weaver’s 100 Vegetables and Where They Came From—which is both masterful and utterly charming—reveals that, in the 18th century, radishes were considered a great antidote for the common cold, “powerful fortifiers of digestion,” and a remedy for kidney stones.

My husband crunches into a crimson orb. “These would be wonderful on dandelion greens,” he says, a little wistfully. “With anchovy dressing.” He gives me a meaningful glance. “Whatever’s on the stovetop smells hot.”

Ah, so it is. Nothing fancy, just lentil soup pulled from our postage-stamp freezer, thawed lickety-split, and brought to a simmer. Quick—open another bottle of wine, red this time, slice more bread, and we are good to go.

By the time we finish up with fresh oranges and chocolate, it is nighttime. The rain is still steadily falling, making the dark street gleam. Seven floors up, we watch our friends leave the building. Holding hands, they run down the sidewalk like children.

Illustration by Vicky Cameron

*Young, tender, good-for-you radish leaves are wonderful in a green salad, stir-fried with ginger and soy sauce, or puréed into a soup with leeks, potatoes, and a little cream.

In the kitchen, as in life, a little finesse goes a long way. And when you are simultaneously in front of the stove and behind the eight-ball, nothing proves my point faster than a pan sauce.

Unlike voluptuous egg- or butter-based sauces such as hollandaise or beurre blanc, a pan sauce is an extension of whatever you happen to be cooking. The technique involved—called deglazing—soon seems as natural as breathing.

I’d made one particular pan sauce for years before I had any idea what it was. The recipe was courtesy of Eleanor Gustafson, a colleague at Antiques magazine and the harried, hawk-eyed mother of four. During the editorial staff’s communal lunches, we diligently entered sweepstakes contests, debated the finer plot points of Dynasty, compared notes on what dealers were doing jail time where and for how long, and exchanged recipes.

Everyone swore by Eleanor’s burgers. “Cook the patties until they are about halfway done, then take them out of the skillet,” she explained. “Add some butter, Worcestershire sauce, and some fresh lemon juice, then cook that for a few minutes while you stir everything around. Put the patties back in and finish them off.”

By the time I got to culinary school, a good decade later, I could make those burgers with my eyes closed. “Very nice,” my instructor said, as I scraped industriously at the residue in my pan and swirled the liquid around. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”

I’ll spare you the tutorial that followed. All you need to know is when you cook meat, any meat, over moderately high heat, you are going to end up with unprepossessing brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder: What you are looking at are spackled-on meat juices, a.k.a bullets of flavor. And when you dissolve them in some liquid—not too much, or you’ll dilute instead of concentrate that lovely essence—the end result is even more complex-tasting that the caramelization you get when you brown something high in sugar. An added bonus is that all that dissolving basically cleans the pan for you.

The butter-Worcestershire-lemon combination works like a dream, but it’s easy enough to go in another direction. For fish fillets, you might think about using soy sauce or tamari instead Worcestershire. And I’m always a sucker for the old-school combinations you’ll find in France—Madeira and sautéed mushrooms with a thin steak, or the mustard-cream pairing you’ll find below spooned over pan-roasted chicken.

Digression: For the record, I’m a big fan of chicken parts. I know that buying a whole chicken and cutting it up at home is more economical, but I often buy parts so I can get as much moist, flavorful dark meat as I want. Compared to breast meat—which is much more expensive per pound—thighs are a terrific bargain.

Pan-Roasted Chicken Thighs with Mustardy Cream Sauce

Serves 4

Adding mustard to almost anything is a classic shortcut to body and brightness; a little cream brings everything together. It’s pretty miraculous, when you think about it. And it also instantly transports you to France, especially on a cool, rainy spring evening that smells faintly of lilacs.

8 chicken thighs, with skin and bones (about 2 pounds), rinsed and patted dry

About 1 tablespoon olive oil

½ cup dry white wine

½ cup chicken broth (or homemade stock if you have it)

A generous splash of heavy cream

A generous dollop of smooth Dijon mustard

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

Preheat the oven to 450ºF. Heat the oil in a large ovenproof skillet* over medium-high heat until shimmery. Add the chicken, skin side down, and brown it well before turning it over. (Patience, here: If it doesn’t release easily, let it sear a minute longer.) Brown the chicken on the other side, then turn it skin side up again and pop the skillet into the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the chicken is done.

Transfer the chicken to a plate, then add the wine and broth to the skillet. If you wanted to toss in a tablespoon of sliced shallots at this point, I wouldn’t say no, but it’s perfectly fine without. Bring the liquid to a boil and boil away for a few minutes. Reduce the liquid by about half, all the while scraping and stirring the brown bits with a wooden spatula (one of the most inexpensive, useful kitchen tools you’ll ever own) to help them dissolve. Add the heavy cream and boil a minute or so longer, just until the sauce thickens to a nice spoonable consistency.

Now, I was taught to strain the sauce at this point, but, unless people are coming over for dinner, those days are gone. I simply whisk in the mustard, then taste before I season with salt and pepper.

Once you have put the chicken on warmed plates (perhaps with parsley potatoes) and spooned some sauce over the crisp skin, you will realize that you have made an extraordinary dinner in almost no time.

* For making a pan sauce, I much prefer a traditional skillet to one that is nonstick. You won’t get as many brown bits in a nonstick skillet, and the dark coating makes them almost impossible to see. My All-Clad 12-inch Fry Pan has been my go-to skillet for about 15 years now, and it’s still going strong. It heats up relatively quickly and spreads a steady heat—key to putting a great sear on meat. A low, sloped side makes for a generous cooking surface and it also allows for easy whisking of a pan sauce. If you don’t have this type of skillet, all is not lost; a shallow braising dish is another great option.

The first local asparagus stops people in their tracks. They bend over to get a closer look and marvel in the voice they usually reserve for newborns. At the Union Square Greenmarket, where I do a good bit of my shopping, asparagus usually arrives with lilacs and lilies-of-the-valley, a flower to which it is closely related. This past Saturday was no exception: It was impossible not to splurge on spring.

We’re all used to seeing fat bundles of asparagus in the rich still-lifes of 16th-century painters such as Frans Snyders, but one of my favorite depictions comes along much later: Asparagus Island, painted in 1860 by William Holman Hunt. The rocky outcrop off the coast of Cornwall, now owned by the National Trust, was once covered with a luxuriant carpet of wildlings, a reminder that the sprawl of Asparagus officinalis in the Old World roughly corresponds to that of the Roman Empire. The Romans excelled at recognizing a good thing when they saw it: Asparagus is one of the few perennial vegetables, and a modest bed of it in a sunny spot can thrive for 15 or 20 years.

"Asparagus Island, Kynance, Cornwall" (photo courtesy Christie's, London)

Green asparagus—today, the type most common in the United States—has spears that range from pencil-thin to thick. The difference in circumference is due not to the relative maturity of the spears but a combination of factors, including the relative age of the plants from which they were harvested (the thinner the spear, the younger the plant), variety, and sex. Female plants produce fewer, larger spears; males give a much higher yield of medium to small spears.

I tend to seek out asparagus that’s on the plump side because of its succulent, almost meaty, texture. I also find it easier to cook. Skinny asparagus may look elegant on the plate, but, as far as I’m concerned, it’s in the same category as angel-hair pasta: Both overcook in about a millisecond, and you are left with mush.

All that aside, go for whatever is the freshest, because asparagus doesn’t keep well. Look for firm, tightly closed tips, with a beguiling lavender blush, scales (or leaves, botanically speaking) that lie flat against glossy stalks, and woody ends that are freshly cut and moist.

My basic cooking method is as follows. It couldn’t be simpler.

Rinse the asparagus well to remove any sand, snap off the woody ends, and peel the lower half of each stalk. In a large skillet, lay the asparagus lengthwise in about an inch or so of salted water. Bring the water to a gentle boil and cook the asparagus until it is just barely tender; the tip of a knife inserted in a spear should meet a very slight resistance. Thin spears will probably be done in about 5 minutes; leave more robust spears in for at least another 5 minutes, testing them with a knife to gauge their doneness. Drain the asparagus on a clean kitchen towel. Once you’ve cooked asparagus this way, you can serve them hot, you can serve them cold, you can go in any number of directions.

The Season’s First Asparagus

Serves 2

This is all you need for a “Spring is Truly Here” supper. Make a generous amount of garlic toast, or, what the hell, cheese toasts with grated Gruyère. Cook about 1½ pounds of asparagus using the method above and melt some good sweet butter for dipping. In another pan, cook a thin slab of aged country ham until it’s crisp. (I have a cache of Benton’s finest in the freezer, but Edwards is good, too.)  Put everything on the table at once and eat your fill.

Asparagus Mimosa

Serves 4

This is a wonderful way to begin a dinner party. The asparagus is delicious warm or at room temperature, and the sieved hard-boiled egg is more than a pretty topping: As it absorbs the vinaigrette, it fluffs up like the yellow mimosa blossoms that punctuate winter in Provence. The richness of the egg also gentles the vinaigrette and gives it body.

Cook about 1½ pounds asparagus as above. Cut two hard-boiled eggs in half, then press them through a sieve into a small bowl. Whisk together about 2 tablespoons white-wine vinegar, 1 tablespoon minced shallot, and a dab of smooth Dijon mustard, if so inclined (a little minced fresh tarragon would be nice, too). Add coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. Whisk in ⅓ cup extra-virgin olive oil—choose a mild one, rather than one that bellows “Tuscany!” Toss the asparagus in a small amount of the vinaigrette, and reserve the rest. Parcel out the asparagus among 4 plates, spoon the rest of the vinaigrette over it, and sprinkle with egg. Et voilà!

Asparagus Lasagne

Adapted from Gourmet

Serves 8

This last treatment is the genius child of Gourmet‘s former executive food editor Zanne Stewart, who wrote a wonderful, very personal column called “Forbidden Pleasures” for the magazine in the early ’90s. The first order of business is to roast the asparagus, a technique introduced to us by Johanne Killeen and George Germon, of Al Forno restaurant, in Providence, Rhode Island. During roasting, the natural sugars caramelize, coaxing out an ever-so-slight bitterness and overlaying the purity of the vegetable with a deeper, more complex flavor.

There are two more keys to greatness here. One is the easy-to-make, deceptively light sauce, and the other is a supermarket stand-by: no-boil lasagne sheets, the next best thing to tender homemade pasta. I tend to use Barilla because there’s no need to soak the sheets in water before using, but I imagine any brand will do.

4 pounds asparagus, trimmed and peeled

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

Coarse salt

½ stick unsalted butter

¼ cup all-purpose flour

1½ cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth

½ cup water

A 7-ounce log mild fresh goat cheese, softened to room temperature and crumbled

About 1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest

About 1½ cups grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Gruyère, plus a handful for topping

1 box no-boil lasagne sheets (9 ounces)

1 cup cold heavy cream

1. Preheat the oven to 500ºF. Cut off the tips of the asparagus spears and set them aside. In a large bowl (work in batches if necessary), toss the asparagus spears with the olive oil, and spread them on 2 rimmed baking sheets. Roast them 5 to 10 minutes (depending on thickness), stirring them around in the pans, halfway through, until they are crisp-tender. Season the roasted asparagus with salt, and, when cool enough to deal with, cut the spears into fork-friendly lengths, about ½ inch or so.

2. Melt the butter in a medium pot, add the flour, and cook over moderately low heat, whisking, about 3 minutes. Whisk in the broth and water and simmer 5 minutes. Whisk in the goat cheese and lemon zest and season with salt to taste; whisk the sauce until it is silky smooth.

3. Skim-coat the bottom of a buttered 9- by 13-inch baking dish with a little sauce, then make layers of pasta sheets, sauce, roasted asparagus, and Parmigiano, ending with a layer of pasta. Scatter the uncooked asparagus tips on top. In a bowl beat the cream with a pinch of salt until it holds soft peaks, and spread it over the asparagus tips. Scatter that handful of Parm over the whipped cream and bake the lasagne on the middle rack of the oven about 30 minutes, or until it’s bubbling around the edges and golden on top. Let it stand 10 minutes to collect itself, then cut into slices and serve.

I’ve made this with great success at Easter, when neither lamb nor ham has appealed. It would also be lovely for Mother’s Day. My mother, who let me run wild in the garden, round and round a venerable asparagus bed, would have adored it.

My husband drinks coffee, and I prefer green tea. I’m not taking any moral or health-related high road here; I simply lost my craving for coffee* a few years back after a nasty bout with the flu, and it never returned.

That said, if I find myself in a place with wonderful coffee (Seattle! Miami! Anywhere in Italy!), I will happily drink it, and spend the rest of the day feeling extremely alert. I never pass up a Vietnamese iced coffee—the smoothest rocket fuel in the world—and on a morning at the Cafecito Bogotá, in Greenpoint (aka “Greenpernt”), Brooklyn, it would be wrong to order anything else with a tortilla colorado or a supremely satisfying chángua bogatana, basically, a breakfast chowder with poached eggs.

If there were an outpost of the Cafecito on our corner, in fact, the problem of replacing our counter-top drip coffeemaker, which recently bit the dust, would have solved itself. But no.

We thought about getting one of those pod coffeemakers like the Keurig. They are wildly popular (no fuss, no muss), but when we had the chance to use one for a week, the novelty soon wore off. The machine took up precious kitchen real estate—our outdated Krups was dinky by comparison. And even though it is blessedly idiot-proof, “I feel like I’m living in a hotel,” said Sam. He missed the ritual of grinding fresh coffee beans. I missed the most aromatic alarm clock ever.

Oh, and one of those single servings disappears far too quickly, for it turns out that almost everything I said earlier about my coffee consumption was a big fat lie.

I’m a coffee cadger.

I’m not interested in having my own. What I love is when Sam offers me a taste of his, made with just enough good milk from the Ronnybrook stand at the Union Square Greenmarket and just the tiniest amount of sugar, which the Food Police will be marking with a skull and crossbones—again—any day now. The oversized cup he uses looks like it’s meant for sharing, and I return to it off and on (“like a bird feeder,” interjects Sam, not unkindly), until I walk out the door.

A cafetière, or French press, was the obvious solution, but still we hesitated. Sam is a leisurely coffee drinker, and those glass beakers cool off fairly quickly.

How did we ever live without the internet? I stumbled upon Bodum’s Columbia Thermal Coffee Press (about $78 at amazon.com) and ordered one immediately. It is brilliant. Made of double-walled stainless steel, this French press makes delicious coffee and keeps it really hot for a good hour, and drinkable for a while after that—a boon for anyone who likes to linger over toast and a (real) newspaper in the morning. Comfortingly low-tech and energy efficient, it’s also sleek, stylish, and easy to stow away after breakfast in a tiny apartment kitchen.

*I’m not kidding. The cartoon below, given to me by a dear friend and which I still find hilarious, has been a fixture on various bulletin boards and refrigerators in my life since the late ’70s.

For the past few weeks, we have not been able to get enough of broccoli rabe (pronounced rahb), an assertive green that’s actually closer kin to the turnip than to common broccoli. Descended from the wild mustard that flourishes in Sicily,  it was introduced to the United States in 1927, by the immigrant D’Arrigo Brothers under their trademarked Andy Boy label.

Broccoli rabe, which is packed with vitamins and minerals, is pretty much available year round. It’s at its peak, though, in the colder months, and so in chilly mid-April, we are unrepentant about our greed. The big, beautiful bunches are guaranteed to catch your eye at the supermarket, where its aliases include “rapini,” “Italian broccoli,” and “broccoli raab.” No matter what it’s called, look for crisp green leaves, succulent stems, and tight buds rather than opened yellow flowers (a sign that it’s too mature and thus too bitter).

I’m particularly enamored of the broccoli rabe grown by Lani’s Farm, in south Jersey. Its deep, minerally sweetness comes from the fact that it’s been overwintered—that is, planted outside late in 2010 and ready to be harvested now, in early spring, long before most spring-planted vegetables are ready to eat. Overwintered broccoli rabe is a great way to introduce young children to the so-called “bitter” greens, especially when you call it “Broccoli Bob.”

Lani’s small, immaculate stand (“You could perform surgery there,” remarked my pal Susan) at the Union Square Greenmarket on Mondays and Saturdays* is managed by farmer Steve Yoo, along with his sister Eugina Yoo, who is a curator at heart. The bright signs she pins up over the piles of pristine greens are full of information, including cooking instructions. Among the shoppers that mob the stand, the cards spark the sort of conversational free-for-all more often heard at a cocktail party.

I bring home pounds and pounds of this broccoli rabe, and we eat it every night. It is so fresh and tender, I don’t blanch it to tame its bite, the way I do the more pungent supermarket kind. My prep, in fact, takes no time: I simply trim the tiniest bit off the ends, whack the stems and leaves crosswise into thirds (more manageable mouthfuls), and give everything a good rinse.

Broccoli rabe has a truly marvelous affinity for garlic. I’ve been pairing it with spring, or green, garlic—that is, very young garlic harvested before the head develops. It looks rather like a scallion, but the leaves are flat, not round. The flavor is mild and very fresh, and consequently you can use lots and lots of it.

I generally chop both the white and green parts of the spring garlic and sauté those in olive oil with some red-pepper flakes. Then I add the broccoli rabe and sauté it until it’s simultaneously silky and juicy. This is wonderful served alongside polenta and roast chicken or broiled sausages. It’s also terrific on pasta, with toasted bread crumbs on top.

It’s going to appear on my Easter table as well. Sautéed with golden raisins, Kalamata olives, and toasted pine nuts, it will cut the richness of leg of lamb and crunchy roast potatoes.

But for a scratch supper, something you can cobble together in no time, nothing beats

Broccoli Rabe on Toast

Serves 2

1 bunch broccoli rabe (about 1 pound), trimmed, cut into manageable pieces, and washed

Extra-virgin olive oil

Plenty of garlic, chopped

Red-pepper flakes to taste

A scant ¼ cup chicken broth (optional)

2 thick slabs good bread

Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper

Unless the broccoli rabe is as young and tender as the dawn, cook it, in batches if necessary, in a 6-quart pot of boiling salted water a few minutes, until the stems are crisp-tender. Transfer it to a bowl of cold water, then drain it well.

Heat about 1 tablespoon olive oil in your largest skillet over moderately high heat until it just starts to shimmer. Add the garlic and red-pepper flakes and cook, stirring, until the garlic begins to color and is fragrant, about 1 minute. Squeeze any excess water out of the broccoli rabe and add, along with the chicken broth if desired, to the skillet; cook a few minutes, until the broccoli rabe is tender but still juicy. Meanwhile, toast the bread.

Put the hot toast in shallow bowls, then top with broccoli rabe and enough cooking liquid to thoroughly sop the toast. Add salt and pepper to taste.

Now, this is extremely delicious on its own, but adding one of the two embellishments below takes it to a whole new place.

Embellishment #1: Do as my great pal and former colleague Kempy Minifie does with her greens, and gild the lily with a fried egg, sunny side up.

Embellishment #2: Cooking authority Roy Finamore learned this trick from his mother. He spreads his toast with Gorgonzola dolce before piling on the broccoli rabe. “The greens have to be really juicy,” he stressed, during a recent confab at the supermarket. We then went our separate ways, only to meet again, minutes later, rooting around among the blues at the cheese counter. The next evening, I realized that, aside from being incredibly delicious, the beauty of this arrangement is that if you are alone you can eat supper with your fingers.

* Lani’s Farm is also at the following NYC Greenmarkets: TriBeCa (Saturdays); Carroll Gardens (Sundays);  Dag Hammarskjold Plaza (Wednesdays); and Columbia (Thursdays).

“I need fowl!” Susan announced, as she materialized at my side. “For chicken soup. It’s almost Passover.” She threw an icy blue stare at the unfortunate shopper who had just avoided tripping over the tote bags at our feet.

It was Saturday morning at the Union Square Greenmarket. The sun hadn’t yet climbed above the buildings to the east. It was cold, damp, and early. I eased the legendary cookbook author and editor out of the fray and into what soon promised to be a patch of sunlight. “I haven’t been able to find fowl anywhere, so I ordered two from Citarella,” said Susan. “Do you know what they sent me?” She paused for effect.

For the uninitiated, the word fowl specifically means a soup, or stewing, hen: not a broiler or roaster but an older, heavier (five- to seven-pound) dame no longer capable of laying eggs. As any good Jewish cook will tell you, a fowl (or preferably two) is the basis for a richer-than-rich chicken soup. One worthy of my mother-in-law’s recipe for matzo balls. One worthy of the Passover Seder. A fowl, in other words, goes out in a blaze of glory.

“Pumped-up birds!” Susan said. She practically spat out the words. “According to the label, they were injected with a fifteen percent solution.”

Holy Moly.

***************

It’s no deep secret that if you read the fine print on some brands of fresh chicken (parts as well as whole birds), it will disclose that the product is “enhanced” or perhaps “marinated.” Euphemisms aside, what that means is that the chicken carcasses are injected with additives such as chicken broth, salt, water, and water-binding carrageenan, a seaweed extract.

When in doubt, zero in on the “Nutrition Facts” printed on the label: The sodium content of an untreated chicken should be anywhere from about 45 to 60 milligrams per four-ounce serving. An enhanced bird might have up to 540 milligrams of sodium per four-ounce serving, more than one third of the American Heart Associations’s recommended daily allowance.

The so-called enhancement of chicken is done in the interests of moisture retention and—when big discount stores staked a claim in the grocery business—the convenience of selling chicken at standardized weights and prices. What never ceases to amaze how quickly convenience and corporate profit become joined at the hip. Consumers, who work so hard to stretch their food dollars every which way, are paying animal-protein prices for water weight. For bloat.

This is not chump change. In 2009, it amounted to roughly $2 billion a year, wrote Melinda Beck, health columnist for the Wall Street Journal. She cited the Truthful Labeling Coalition, a thriving grassroots organization that includes not only chicken producers who don’t enhance what they sell, but more than 30,000 consumers.

What I find interesting is that nobody seems to have factored all of this into a reported increase in chicken consumption. The average American apparently eats upwards of 90 pounds of chicken a year, more than twice as much in the 1970s. But, given the rise in enhanced chicken, is that really true?

Let’s step into the “Go Figure” department for a quick moment. According to current USDA regulations, enhanced chicken is technically “100% percent all natural.” The reasoning? If you inject natural substances into something else that is natural, then it’s still, well, natural. And a bold checkmark from the American Heart Association doesn’t give a particular brand a pass, either. It simply signifies that the product meets the AHA’s guidelines for fat and cholesterol; salt doesn’t enter into it.

***************

Susan eventually found her fowl at Ottomanelli Bros. on Bleecker Street, a venerable (since 1900) meat and poultry market here in the city. I cut to the chase and ordered mine from Ottomanelli, too—the uptown store at York Avenue and 82nd Street. Weighing in at almost eight pounds, the hen, which came from a private farm in Pennsylvania Amish country, almost entirely filled my largest heavy pot. Just out of curiosity, I also bought a soup hen from Citarella, another venerable (since 1912) New York institution that built its reputation on selling the most pristine fish in the city before branching out into meat, poultry, and fancy foodstuffs. The Citarella bird, from Bell & Evans, a producer that does not inject its poultry, was smaller, but a beaut as well.

Both birds made delicious soup. In terms of the meat, the Bell & Evans was definitely more chickeny, more rounded in flavor, than their typical roaster. The meat of the Ottomanelli bird was even deeper and more complex—the only word for it is resonant.

Susan and I are still gnawing over the mysterious provenance of the fowl she got from Citarella. In addition to Bell & Evans, the store carries chicken under their own name—both organic and all-natural. Aha! I thought, but then Maritza Santana, the customer service director, told me that the soup hens always come from Bell & Evans. “Could we have possibly sent your friend really big kosher chickens instead?” she asked. “I’m so sorry. Those are brined, so the salt content is high.”

You can probably feel Susan’s icy blue stare from where you’re sitting.

The larger puzzle is why don’t supermarkets stock fowl for Passover. They lay in supplies of pike, carp, and whitefish for homemade gefiltefish. They lay in plenty of briskets for the main course, not to mention acres of matzo in every conceivable permutation. In a quick survey in my neighborhood grocery stores, I couldn’t even find a manager who knew what a soup hen, let alone a fowl, was. When I told my mother-in-law I’d gotten my hands on not one but two of them, she couldn’t believe it. “That’s what my mother used!” she said. “I’ll bet your kitchen smells wonderful.”

My mother, an all-around sportswoman, loved to fish, and she didn’t mind scaling and gutting her catch. She was, however, less enthusiastic about cooking it. Uncomplicated was the name of the game. Both my parents felt that the mild fish they preferred—flounder, drum, sheepshead—was so pristine it didn’t need much fooling with, although things changed somewhat when Mom began dipping into Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

She had rushed out to buy it the instant it was published, in 1961. She read it in huge chunks, like a novel, and until that book entered our home, I had no idea my mother spoke French. One evening, supper smelled especially good, but, “What in the hell is on the flounder?” Daddy demanded. Mom didn’t miss a beat. “Beurre maître d’hôtel,” she replied silkily, a little mysteriously. Daddy chewed a moment and swallowed. “Sure is good,” he allowed.

Unlike my mother, my father was not ambitious with rod and reel. When the spirit moved, he would light-foot out at four in the morning with his surfcasting gear, but, naturally, I like to think he was happiest when he sat with me at the end of our pier, waiting for something, anything, to swim along and bump into one of my laboriously baited hooks. We would sit there for hours, and no one ever interrupted our daydreams.

Mom either broiled fish or pan-seared it in the cast-iron skillet reserved just for seafood. We never had crunchy, deep-golden batter-fried fish, though. She thought it was common, and couldn’t abide the smell.

All too predictably, I adore fried fish and eat it every chance I get. Saint Peter’s fish (a.k.a. tilipia) on the shores of the Galilee. Pearl spot on a tiny island in the Arabian Sea. Sand dabs in Monterey, California, and catfish at the Taylor Grocery, just outside Oxford, Mississippi. Filet-O-Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s everywhere.

Now that I think about it, fried fish was my entrée into the food world. My gateway drug. My first real job, snagged on the fly the summer before I left for college.

It was at a Long John Silver’s Seafood Shoppe. My mother, who had died of cancer some months before, would have found this, by turns, hilarious and horrifying. She would have been proud that I was doing something to earn my keep and secretly convinced that I would end up working a carnival midway somewhere around Myrtle Beach.

Before I realized that the smell would never come out (Mom had a point), I really liked my uniform: a neat navy-blue skirt, with sailor-ish buttons, paired with a crisp white middy blouse, eerily prescient of the no-wrinkle cotton shirts found in mail-order catalogs today. I was not, however, thrilled about the enormous “Big Catch” button that had to be pinned each morning to the chest pocket. I wore it anyway.

Long John Silver’s, a seafood chain based in landlocked Kentucky, took the English notion of fish and chips popularized by Arthur Treacher and gave it a New-England-fishing-village-circa-1800 kind of vibe.

My boss was proud of what he sold. “Cod fillets, straight from Iceland,” he bragged, as I peered myopically into the walk-in. “Excellent fish. Going up quickly, very quickly, in price, though.” He gave the freezer door a worried thump. While steering me past the deep-fat fryers (“we basically fry the batches to order”), he let a solicitous, pudgy hand drift to my waist, and I fixed him with a glare I didn’t know I possessed. “Er, em, fresh oil makes such a difference,” he said, and offered me a small plastic basket of hush puppies.

Paralytic in math class for years, I discovered that I was a whiz at the cash register, at making change. “All you need to do is count,” a co-worker explained, and she was right. I also found pleasure in being efficient, in anticipating what customers wanted, and I was absurdly delighted at being voted Employee of the Month. Twice.

This past Friday evening, I came to a halt in front of our local Irish bar. “Fried Fish for Lent” read the sign in the window. I fell hook, line, and sinker, and arrived home with two styrofoam take-out boxes bulging with fat sandwiches, french fries, and extra tartar sauce. “I wonder if this fish is sustainable,” Sam said, a bit indistinctly, since his mouth was full. I pretended not to hear. “It must be one of those sacrifices you make for Lent,” he added. “Have a french fry.”

Italians have an uncanny knack for making something out of nothing, for making something that is simultaneously minimalist—austere, even—and luxurious. Think of the interiors, the clothes, the jewelry, in last year’s film I Am Love.

In an Italian kitchen, this trick relies, in part, on impeccable ingredients that aren’t fussed over too much. But, more importantly, it relies on the fact that no ingredient is ever taken for granted. A terrific example of this is spaghetti with onions, which has been one of my scratch suppers for years. I wish I could remember who gave me the idea, but I don’t have a clue. A rummage through the bookshelves turned up a number of similar recipes with caramelized onions, which variously involve homemade pasta, garlic, chicken broth, heavy cream, dry white wine, freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and/or white pepper. I’m sure they are lovely, but they’re not at all what I want.

What I am talking about is staggeringly simple to prepare and good any time of year. My husband and I especially enjoy having it for a late-ish Sunday supper after being away for the weekend. It basically cooks itself while we unpack our bags, sort through the mail, and get ready for Monday morning.

It is also a wonderful thing to have in your culinary repertoire if you find yourself asking people over for dinner on the spur of the moment. It works equally well whether you are inviting longtime friends or that nice couple who just moved into the building. “Supper? Really? No, don’t be silly—we can’t put you out like that. It’s so last-minute!”

“Don’t worry, it’s no trouble at all,” you blithely assure them. “Impromptu parties are always fun.” And you mean every word.

You may think the recipe (such an officious-sounding word in a case like this) below is too minimalist; aside from salt and pepper, there are only three ingredients. So, depending on your mood and the provisions at hand, feel free to embellish. Crumble a lavish amount of crisp bacon on top or toss in some quick-braised pot greens, roasted tomatoes, or roughly chopped fresh herbs. To add sharpness and verve to the meal, you could follow the pasta with a salad of fennel, orange, and green olives. Or simply a bowl of clementines.

Spaghetti with Onions

Serves 4

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more if necessary

1½ pounds yellow onions (about 4 medium), chopped medium

Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper

1 pound spaghetti or spaghettini

Heat the olive oil in a medium-size heavy pot or skillet* over moderate heat until it goes a bit shimmery. Add the onions and stir them around with a wooden spatula to coat them with some oil. Then gently shove them into a heap, right in the center of the pot (they will steam—almost braise, really—in their juices and the oil). Cover the pot and reduce the heat to very low.

A quick digression on the main ingredient: Don’t substitute Vidalias or other sweet onions for the plain-old yellow onions called for above. Sweet varieties get cloying when they cook down, and no amount of salt will push the dish back into balance. As far as chopping is concerned, use a heavy knife with a wide blade—and let it do most of the work for you. Don’t be tempted to use a food processor; you’ll wind up with a slushy mess instead of uniform pieces that will cook evenly. One last thing: Feel free to double the amount of onions you use and tuck half of them in the refrigerator for later in the week. They’re delicious on pizza or bruschetta, in an omelet, or tossed with braised pot greens.

While the onions are working, get a large pot of salted water ready for the pasta and enjoy a glass of red wine. If you happen to have a crumbly hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano sitting around, now’s the time to pull it out and let everyone have at it.

Cook the onions for at least 30 to 40 minutes, until they are beyond pliant—you want them very soft and lush and pale golden. Give them a stir every so often to prevent them from sticking or coloring too much but keep them in their huddle. Add a little more oil if you think it wise. Now, some recipes will advise you to increase the heat and sauté the onions until they caramelize—that is, turn a dark amber and leave a rich, meaty-tasting glaze on the bottom of the pot. I’m not after that sort of jammy intensity here, but a very mellow roundness, so I don’t take them nearly that far.

By the time the pasta is cooked and the plates are warmed, some thoughtful person will have opened another bottle of red and the table will be glowing in the candlelight. Drain the pasta and put it in your favorite serving bowl. Slather it with the onions, use two big spoons to distribute the savoriness, and don’t worry about the fact that what you are serving looks rather plain. It will be wonderful.

* I’d avoid using cast-iron because of the black interior; it’s too difficult to see what the onions are doing.

Photo © Kristen McQuillin

Ever curious about the world at large, Gourmet published its first big piece about Japanese food, “Song of Sashimi,” in 1958. Beginning in the 1970s, the person most responsible for the depth, passion, and accuracy of the magazine’s Japan coverage was contributing editor Elizabeth Andoh, the leading English-language authority on the subject.

Elizabeth is a brilliant teacher—her “Taste of Culture” culinary arts programs in Tokyo and Osaka are legendary—and just watching her exacting yet unfussy movements in the kitchen gives you insight into another world and another, very mindful, philosophy.

Yesterday, ten days after the devastating events in Japan, she wrote, “Nature’s onslaught continues with hundreds of strong aftershocks, many accompanied by yet more tsunami. Other big quakes in nearby Nagano (March 12), Shizuoka (March 15), Yamagata and Chiba (March 18) Prefectures continue to unnerve everyone …. To compound the horror, ensuing damage to a large nuclear power plant in Fukushima Prefecture is proving difficult to contain and repair, making the whole world tense.”

Because the rolling blackouts in Tokyo continue to wreak their own havoc, Elizabeth made her way to Osaka, where she and her husband have a second home. “With the exception of certain nationwide shortages (flashlights, batteries, instant noodles, and bottled water chief among them), supermarket shelves in Osaka are full,” she explained. “Energy reduction is voluntary, though earnest—many households are contributing savings on their utility bills to relief efforts. Seismic activity is gentler here, too, though still worrisome.”

She was clear about the fact that she is not a front-line reporter, offering instead “a few words that capture the spirit and mood in Japan, as it struggles in the aftermath of catastrophic natural disaster.”

Dictionary of a Determined Nation

by Elizabeth Andoh

I begin with SHIMBOU-ZUYOI, which describes people with great stores of patience—calmly applying their fortitude, especially in exasperating circumstances.

辛抱強い

shimbou-zuyoi

Next on my list is GAMAN-ZUYOI, a similar concept. Forgoing, or at least postponing, personal needs so that others can benefit … that is what defines someone who is gaman-zuyoi.

我慢強い

gaman-zuyoi

Sharing limited food, water, and blankets in freezing emergency shelters requires shimbou (patience) and gaman (endurance) … as does postponing unessential repairs and rescheduling your day to accommodate erratic rolling energy blackouts. Shimbou-zuyoi and gaman-zuyoi people are much admired in Japanese society.

Conversely, those thinking only of their own needs are deemed to be WAGAMAMA (which has nothing to do with the noodle-bar chain); they are frowned upon.

応援・支援・協力

ouen …  shien … kyouryoku

Support takes many forms. OUEN is similar to cheerleading (hang in there, we’re rooting for you!) while SHIEN is more often financial backing (donations, underwriting projects). The word for cooperation, KYOURYOKU, is written with multiple “strength” (chikara) calligraphy. Pooling strengths and resources results in powerful cooperation.

In closing, Elizabeth wrote, “The Japanese are individually and collectively practicing shimbou and gaman, and doing their best in the ouen, shien, and kyouryoku departments, too,” and appended a list of disaster-relief organizations**.  Seeing her words and conjuring her—small, indomitable, and laden with her emergency kit-knapsack (the contents, detailed in an earlier email, include flashlight, extra batteries, water, essential medications, money, identification papers, gloves, face mask, first aid supplies, and an extra sweater with hood)—made me want to show respect in a way I knew she would understand.

I pulled her latest book, Kansha: Celebrating Japan’s Vegan and Vegetarian Traditions, down from the shelf and made a quick trip to Katagiri, the oldest Japanese grocery store in the United States. Happily, it is right in my neighborhood.

Then I cooked something restorative: A thick, slithery udon noodle soup rich with mushrooms and topped with kale, grated fresh ginger, and slivers of daikon, carrot, and thin fried tofu. When I blanched the little bundle of greens, I plucked it out of the boiling water with the long chopsticks Elizabeth gave me years ago. “They are in-cred-ibly useful!” she said crisply, when I opened the box. I’ll bet a pair of those were packed in her emergency-kit knapsack, too.

* For an in-depth look at how raw fish took America by storm, read Anne Mendelson’s “A Fish Story,” which appeared in the October 2002 issue.

Temperatures are creeping up, but March in the Northeast is still heavy going. And even though there is beautiful asparagus available at my local supermarket, it’s surrounded by bluff, hearty winter squash, rutabagas, and chard, and, consequently, it looks a little embarrassed to be at the same party.

I walk past the showy spears without a second look, heading instead for the brussels sprouts—just as beautiful in their own way, and my favorite green vegetable for swinging into spring.

In the winter, I generally pan-brown them with a little garlic and, if company’s coming, some toasted pine nuts or pecans. That recipe appears in the big yellow Gourmet Cookbook, and I wrote in the headnote that you could almost serve brussels sprouts cooked this way—they’re so caramelized, they’re practically candied—with drinks.

I don’t know why I waffled. You could, most definitely, serve these as hors d’oeuvres; I do, and people go absolutely wild.

But in mid-March, I want something fresher, something that pops in a different way, which is why I’m standing over a cutting board slicing brussels sprouts into thin shreds. The first time Sam saw me do this, he stared in disbelief. “Can you get any more finicky?” he asked. Then he saw that even I, not the speediest of cooks, dispatched a pound of sprouts in no time.

The technique, called chiffonade, isn’t remotely new; literally translated, the French term means “made of rags,” and the fact that some of your strips will be of varying thicknesses is part of the charm (that’s why I avoid using a hand-held slicer). The great thing about brussels sprout chiffonade—basically a lightly cooked slaw—is that it becomes tender in minutes, a boon to anyone who needs to get weeknight suppers on the table without delay. It makes a sprightly side for corned beef on Saint Patrick’s Day and is fabulous with fish on Fridays in Lent. And when I’ve served this to people who tend to ignore their vegetables, they gobble it right up.

As far as the seasonings go, you can use whatever you want. One combo I learned at Gourmet was cumin seeds (½ teaspoon total) plus a drizzle of fresh lime juice (about 1 tablespoon) at the end, which is especially wonderful with pan-seared steak or my standby duck recipe. But you could substitute curry spices or dried chile flakes for the cumin, for instance, or go in a completely different direction with capers and lemon juice, or forgo the butter and make a bacon vinaigrette.

Brussels Sprout Chiffonade

Adapted from The Gourmet Cookbook

Serves 4

Trim 1 pound of brussels sprouts; cut them in half lengthwise, then cut them crosswise into thin slices. In a large skillet, melt a generous amount of unsalted butter (about 2 tablespoons) over moderately high heat. Wait until the butter stops foaming, then add ¼ teaspoon cumin seeds. Give the cumin a few moments to bloom before adding half of the sprouts and some salt and pepper. Cook the sprouts, stirring and fluffing them every once in a while with tongs until they’re tender—5 minutes at the outside. Shovel them into a large bowl and cook the rest of the sprouts in the same way. (Two batches sound complicated, but the sprouts cook faster and more evenly.) Transfer the second batch of sprouts to the bowl, stir in the lime juice, and tinker with the seasoning.

One last thing. Someone, somewhere, is going to take one look at the cutting board in the photo above and tell me to discard it for food-safety reasons. But it’s a solid piece of maple and just the right size. Most importantly, though, the modern notion that plastic is more hygienic than wood is more controversial than you might think. According to the Food Safety Laboratory at UC Davis, a wood board that’s been scrubbed clean by hand doesn’t support the growth of bacteria, no matter how battered it is; a knife-scarred plastic board, on the other hand, will remain contaminated.

The take-away? Always clean a plastic cutting board in the dishwasher, and always eat your brussels sprouts.