Spring cooking

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Tender spring vegetables dress up the delightful masa triangles known as tetelas

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By Leslie Brenner

Are you familar with the Mexican masa shape known as a tetela? It’s a triangular masa pocket filled with beans and/or cheese, and sometimes other ingredients. A popular treat in Oaxaca, tetelas have been showing up in Norteamericano restaurants and on cooking sites in recent years.

READ: “How to make tetelas — the tasty, triangular treats from Oaxaca that are about to become super-trendy”

Our friend (and Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cuisine expert) Olivia Lopez offered us a dreamy tetela recipe for spring a while back, and now seems like the perfect moment to spotlight it — as the markets are filled with asparagus, fresh favas, spring onions and peas. I even picked up some green garbanzos last week at my favorite local Lebanese grocery.

Olivia’s recipe is in the seasonal-produce-forward, masa-centric style she features at her Dallas-based Molino Oloyo, and it’s a terrific recipe to create at home. Basically, bean-filled tetelas are topped with a quick sauté of those beautiful spring vegetables, then finished with dabs of requesón — fresh cheese you can find in Mexican markets; ricotta makes a fine substitute. Finish it with drizzles of salsa macha.

To make the tetelas, you’ll need first to simmer up a pot of bayo or mayocoba beans, and then fashion those into quick, vegan refried beans. You’ll also need to get your hands on some heirloom masa harina, if you don’t already have some. (We use Masienda’s masa harina, available through its website, and at many Whole Foods Markets. You can also buy it at Amazon.) Do you have a tortilla press? You’ll need that, too.

New to the world of heirloom maíz and masa harina? CHECK OUT: The Masa Movement Project

Try a simpler tetela RECIPE: Tetelas with Beans, Cheese and Salsa Verde

Because the tetelas can be held in a warm oven and the vegetables can be prepped (and salsa macha made) ahead of time, this is a lovely dish to make for a Mother’s Day brunch or other gathering — just throw the veg in the sauté pan right before serving.

Here’s the recipe:

RECIPE: Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables

Meanwhile, if you happen live in North Texas, or you’ll be visiting Dallas later this month, you can taste Olivia’s extraordinary food: Molino Oloyo will hold one of its locally famous pop-ups from Tuesday, April 30 through Sunday, el Cinco del Mayo. Hopefully, I’ll see you there — I’ll be enjoying Olivia’s incomparable offerings at least one of the evenings, maybe more.

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6 dishes to make in June, as we spring into summer

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Fuchsia Dunlop’s Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives, from ‘Land of Fish and Rice’

By Leslie Brenner

Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer — so where are all the great tomatoes and corn? Coming soon, don’t worry!

Rather than rush prematurely into zucchini and eggplant, it’s worth taking a minute to slow down and appreciate the final fabulous weeks of spring and all that means for cooks who follow the seasons.

Such a delicious moment, with artichokes and asparagus still gorgeous, strawberries and new potatoes at their best, flowering chives in the Asian markets and peaches just starting to come in. That’s why we’ve put together a bunch of recipes that celebrate this spring-into-summer moment.

Fuchsia Dunlop’s Slivered Pork with Flowering Chives

The dish shown above comes from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Land of Fish and Rice, one of my all-time favorite cookbooks.

READ: Cookbooks We Love: Shanghai and its Jiangnan region shine in ‘Land of Fish and Rice’

I love the recipe for so many reasons, starting with I’d seen flowering chives in Asian markets so many times and always wondered what to do with them. Also, as Dunlop writes in her headnote, it serves as a master recipe “for any stir-fry that follows the basic formula of slivered meat plus slivered vegetable.” Dunloop has a wonderful way of teaching important lessons in Chinese technique with each of her recipes — which always work and are always revelations.

The Greenest Gazpacho

Inevitably I start craving gazpacho each year before tomatoes are at their peak. Since creating this recipe a few years ago, this is what I always make. It’s an easy blitz of cukes, celery, bell pepper, tons of parsley and almonds or cashews, seasoned with sherry vinegar and olive oil.

June’s the perfect month for it. It happens to be vegan and gluten-free. I once made it for a movie star (a big one — no joke!), and she loved it.

Country-Style Potato Salad from ‘Jubilee’

Perfect for Father’s Day, a Juneteenth celebration — or hey, even a Memorial Day picnic today! — this classic comes from Toni Tipton Martin’s Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking. It tastes very much like the potato salad my mom used to make when I was a kid.

Chilled Asparagus Troisgros-Savoy

This mayo-based sauce is my current favorite thing to dunk asparagus in. It would also be great to serve with boiled artichokes. You can make your own mayo for it, or use store-bought.

Strawberry-Mezcal Ice Cream

Yes, it’s as good as it sounds.

Showstopper Rolled Pavlova with Peaches and Blackberries

Peaches are here! I had superb ones when I was in California a couple weeks ago, and I bought some from South Carolina a few days ago here in Dallas. Memorial Day is when the Texas peaches usually start — hurray! Which means if you’re somewhere in the U.S., you’re probably not far from peaches.

This pavlova is a rolled sheet of meringue, filled with whipped cream, peaches, blackberries and almonds and topped with more of the same. It comes to us from Yotam Ottolenghi’s Sweet, cowritten with Helen Goh, and an assist from Tara Wigley. It’s one of the most fun desserts I’ve ever made — and showstoppingly striking when you slice it.

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Memorial Day Sale: Buy our e-cookbook, ‘21 Favorite Recipes from Cooks Without Borders,’ for jus $5 — now through June 4!

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Got gorgeous spring vegetables? These three recipes spotlight them deliciously

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Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables

By Leslie Brenner

There’s nothing like the season’s first asparagus, favas, green garbanzos and English peas to excite produce-worshiping cooks. And when treasures like ramps, morels or fiddlehead ferns turn up on a forest walk or a swing through the farmer’s market, the urge to create something special inevitably swells into can’t-wait-to-get-these-in-a-pan.

It’s not always easy to find recipes starring the more fleeting of these vegetables; improvising is great route, if you’ve got some skills and a bit of flair. Happily, all these springtime treats go beautifully together, whether on a savory tart, a quick sauté or a salad. Or you could resurrect that old 70’s-and-80’s standby, pasta primavera.

Don’t forget that you can round out a combo with more commonplace springy veg — slender young carrots, French green beans, sugar snap peas and radishes. And no one will arrest you if you toss in something frozen, like peas, shelled favas or artichoke hearts.

Harmony in a soup plate

Two years ago, I was smitten by a beautiful spring vegetable soup Ellie Krieger had created for The Washington Post, and took it a step farther by broadening the palette of vegetables and making it vegan. (It’s based on leek broth rather than chicken broth; you could also use store-bought vegetable broth.) Besides asparagus, carrots, French green beans, turnips and baby spinach leaves, it also calls for English peas or frozen peas. You could substitute sugar snaps, and add or subtract whatever — quartered radishes, favas, morels, green garbanzos and garlic scapes would all be fabulous additions (toss them in when you cook the diced turnips).

Garden-fresh modern Mexican

Or take a tip from Cooks Without Borders’ Mexican cuisine expert Olivia Lopez and give her Tetelas with Spring Vegetables a whirl. The triangular tetelas are made from heirloom masa harina that you press into tortilla rounds, fill with vegan refried beans and cook on a griddle or comal. Top them with beautiful tumble of sautéd spring veg enlivened with lime and cilantro, plus charred scallion and blips of requesón (fresh Mexican cheese) or ricotta. If you happen to have some salsa macha, it’s wonderful drizzled on as a final florish. (Or not!)

RECIPE: Olivia Lopez’s Tetelas with Spring Vegetables

The dish has a similar vibe to a dish Olivia has created for a Molino Olōyō pop-up dinner in Dallas on April 17. Leading off a tasting menu of eight courses, her Sopecito con Alcachofa will feature baby artichokes, garden peas, green onions and requesón. “Spring ingredients were the inspiration for both,” she says. (There are still a few seats available — more info here.)

Luxurious springtime stew inspired by Spain

Finally, though this dish was inspired by a soup — minestra de primavera, traditional in the Navarre and Rioja regions of Spain — in the hands of superstar cookbook author Claudia Roden, it’s more like a spring stew.

A little cured pork in the form of prosciutto, serrano ham or bacon gives it depth and umami; cooking the vegetables long enough so they’re meltingly tender makes it deeply delicious. It’s definitely for folks won’t don’t want their vegetables crunchy. I highly recommended it.

RECIPE: Claudia Roden’s Medley of Spring Vegetables

Let yourself riff on any of the three recipes, and the possibilities are endless.

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Brunch, picnic or dinner: 18 delightful recipes for Mother’s Day

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By Leslie Brenner

Have you left planning your Mother’s Day celebration till the last minute? No worries — there’s still ample time! Shop today, make anything this afternoon that needs to be made in advance, and tomorrow will be a breeze. In fact, many of the dishes below can be made entirely in advance.

I’ve put together some of my favorite dishes for Mother’s Day — things that are delightfully spring-y, festive, delicious and versatile: Any of these would be perfect for brunch, lunch, dinner or a picnic. If you have time, add in a hand-made food gift — like Olivia’s Salsa Macha, or a jar of Jubilee’s Pickled Shrimp. Or give her your mom a new cookbook (even if you tell her it’s been ordered and it’s on the way, she’ll still love it).

OK, enough chatter. Here come the recipes. Mix and match according to what sounds good.

Fresh Herb Kuku from Najmieh Batmanglij’s ‘Food of Life’

Carrotes Râpées

This version of the classic French carrots in lemon vinaigrette asks you to cut the carrots into fine julienne, but you can just grate them, as French home cooks do.

Pickled Shrimp

I love this aforementioned pickled shrimp from Toni Tipton-Martin’s Jubilee. (The cookbook also makes a great gift).

Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh

This minty salad from Michael Solomonov’s Zahav has been a favorite of mine for years. I made it just last night — a double-batch, though there was only two of us. That’s how much I like it.

Buckwheat Blinis with Crab Salad, Smoked Trout or Smoked Salmon

Top these tender, delicious little buckwheat blinis with crab salad, as Roxana Jullapat suggests in her splendid book Mother Grains. Or dab each with crème fraîche or sour cream, and top with a small piece of smoked trout or smoked salmon and snipped chives or a sprig of dill. If you’re taking them to a picnic, bring the blinis separately and assemble them on the picnic table.

Pea-Ricotta Dip

Super easy to make, light-hearted and lemony, Pea-Ricotta Dip is wonderful with rye bread, baguette or even crackers.

Greenest Gazpacho

Deliciously vegan and delightfully herbal, The Greenest Gazpacho is a make-ahead crowd-pleaser that also travels well. (Bring the herbs in a zipper bag and serve in short plastic glasses.)

Cucumber, Radish and Feta Salad

This pretty Cucumber, Radish and Feta Salad is inspired by khiar bel na’na, a Levantine cucumber salad made with dried mint and orange blossom water. We love what fresh mint layers into the mix.

Herb-Happy Potato Salad

More a blueprint than a strict recipe, our Herb-Happy Potato Salad is infinitely riffable. Find more delicious potato salad ideas here.

Najmieh’s Fresh Herb Kuku

The wonderful Fresh Herb Kuku from Najmieh Batmanglij’s Food of Life (photo near the top of the story) is like a Persian frittata.

Poached Salmon or Arctic Char

Poached fish is always a lovely Mother’s Day centerpiece, and it’s one that happens to travel super well. Try a simple classic version with dill sauce, or the Poached Salmon with Fennel-Celery Salad and Caper Mayo from Kate Leahy’s Wine Style. Leahy’s is meant to be served warm, but it’s also fabulous cold.

Quintessential Quiche Lorraine

One of my favorite all-time brunch dishes, Quiche Lorraine also travels well. Our version is Quintessential.

Perfect Easy Roast Chicken

Classic roast chicken makes a great centerpiece anytime. You can also make it ahead, chill it down and invite it to a picnic — it’s great with all those salads, and maybe a Tangy Green Everything Sauce. Ours comes with a story about what mothers can learn from their kids who cook.

Blueberry-Lemon-Almond Anytime Cake

Inspired by a recipe in Ottolenghi Simple, our Blueberry-Lemon-Almond Anytime Cake is juicy with fruit and travels well.

Almond Tuiles

Lovely on their own, with coffee, or with ice cream or chocolate mousse (see below), these Almond Tuiles are surprisingly easy to make.

Strawberry-Mezcal Ice Cream

Your mom loves mezcal — doesn’t she?! We thought so: She’ll love our Strawberry-Mezcal Ice Cream. If she’s not a mezcal fan, swap it out for tequila, orange liqueur or a touch of almond extract or orange-blossom water.

Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake

Apricot season will be soon, but you don’t have to wait to make this Apricot and Pistachio Olive-Oil Cake from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking with Dorie — dried apricots and apricot preserves provide the magic.

Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse

If your mom is a chocolate-lover, something tells us Your Favorite Chocolate Mousse will be her favorite too. For a picnic, you can chill these in short plastic cups and wrap in plastic film — either pre-garnished, or bring along the whipped cream and cocoa nibs or sprinkles.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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Fresh, light and hopeful: Here are 7 of our favorite starters for spring

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Sabzi Khordan, the herb platter that starts nearly every Persian meal. Here it is shown with a quickly made version of naan-e barbari (Persian flatbread) fashioned from frozen pizza dough.

By Leslie Brenner

As spring beginnings go, planet Earth has seen better. (Really — tornadoes just now??!)

Here’s to hope and renewal — and with that in mind, a few delicious ways to begin the meals of spring.

The Greenest Gazpacho

Vegan, gluten-free, easy-to-make (in a blender, no cooking) and finished with a handful of gorgeous fresh spring herbs, this is the soup I turn to when the sun warms the earth, but tomato season is still a ways off. It gets richness from raw almonds or cashews and optimistic tang from sherry vinegar.

Asparagus Gribiche

Inspired by a recipe in the Gjelina cookbook, this dish celebrates two of my favorite springtime treats: asparagus and eggs. It’s dressy enough for Easter or Passover, and a delightful treat any old time.

Pea-Ricotta Dip

Foolproof and addictive, this dip is made with frozen peas, swirled with ricotta and brightened with lemon zest. It comes together in a flash.

Ridiculously Easy Minted Pea Soup

Our spin on French potage Saint-Germain — fresh pea soup, served warm — this one’s also made from frozen peas, yet it tastes like you spent hours shelling fresh ones. Elegant and easy, it’s the perfect beginning to a spring dinner, or dreamy for lunch.

Sabzi Khordan — Persian Herb Platter

Sabzi Khordan is the platter of herbs and accouterments that appears on nearly every Iranian table. You can nibble on the herbs from the start of the meal and throughout, or wrap a small assortment in a piece of nan-e barbari, Persian flatbread. Our friend Nilou Motamed shared her super-easy recipe for the nan shown here, made from frozen pizza dough; find a link in our Sabzi Khordan recipe.

Vegan Spring Beauty Soup

Made with beautiful spring vegetables — asparagus, leeks, sugar-snap peas, young carrots, turnips and more — this plant-based soup is light and elegant.

Artichokes Vinaigrette

Spring begins artichoke season, and artichokes are a great thing to have in your repertoire from now through the end of summer. You can boil them and serve them with mayo to dip the leaves in, or open up the petals and drizzle on a shallot vinaigrette in classic French style. Our recipe links to a story that shows how to prep them.

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Recipe for Today: A super-light spring vegetable soup for purists — vegan or not!

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Vegan Beauty Soup.jpg

By Leslie Brenner

Memorial Day has come and gone, which means true summer is just around the corner.

Meanwhile, the delightful produce of spring — asparagus and peas, leeks and tender young carrots, and spring-happy herbs like dill — still taste so right. Before we know it they’ll be yesterday’s news, and we’ll have moved onto corn and tomatoes, zucchini, eggplant and okra.

So, quick — make this soup, which eats like a poem about springtime. You can make it vegan, as it was conceived, or swap store-bought chicken broth for the leek broth, if you want more instant gratification.

Either way, if the longest intensive cooking spree in American history has left you a few pounds over, it’s a beautiful way to eat light and pure.

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Recipe for Today: Asparagus, all dressed up!

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AsparagusGribiche.jpg

By Leslie Brenner

We have a new feature at Cooks Without Borders: our Recipe for Today. Every morning, the green announcement bar at the top of all our pages offers a link to something that sounds delicious to us that day: Recipe for Today!

It’ll be right for the season, holiday-appropriate if something’s going on, and keyed to whether it’s a weekday or weekend.

As often as we can manage, we’ll also feature it in a quickie story, like this one.

Asparagus with a new-wave gribiche is one of our favorite ways to celebrate spring. It’s great for a weekend brunch, a picnic in the park, a dinner with friends, a potluck or even a festive celebration. The New Wave Gribiche in our recipe is inspired by L.A. chef (Gjelina, Gjusta) Travis Lett’s modern take on classic French sauce gribiche, made with eggs, capers, cornichons, herbs, shallots and other good things.

Enjoy your Recipe for Today!

If you enjoy Recipe for Today, please share it on your social channels or email it to a friend who will like it. Thank you!

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Beautiful, light, and herbal: This easy-to-customize vegan soup gracefully celebrates spring

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Cooks Without Borders’ Spring Vegan Soup

By Leslie Brenner

A couple weeks ago — shortly after spring had sprung — a recipe in the Washington Post captured my fancy. Its lede photo depicted a brothy bowl with peas and spinach, leeks and dill in varying shades of green, set off gorgeously with pink-skinned, white-fleshed potatoes. The story’s author and the recipe’s creator, Ellie Krieger, offered it up as “Proof spring is soup season, too.”

Had to have it! I made the soup that very evening, and absolutely loved it. No question I’ll make it again and again.

Still, in my mind’s test kitchen, I couldn’t help but riff. Wouldn’t it be lovely with some asparagus tips? English or snap peas still clinging to their pods? Fresh favas or field peas, if I happened upon them? Wouldn’t turnips be just as nice as potatoes — or even nicer, if it’s optimal healthy one is after, or if you could find those beautiful tiny Tokyo turnips? Sure, I’d lose that pretty pink flourish, but I could add slices of slender springtime carrots instead.

And hey, couldn’t this soup be made vegan — if I created a broth out of the castaway tops of leeks I’m forever gathering in the crisper (the WaPo recipe added to my stash), would that have sufficient flavor?

Well, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes! The very next night, that riffing went live — and the result was grand.

I call it Vegan Spring Beaty Soup partly because it’s beautiful to look at, and partly because of its healthful purity: I imagine that the more frequently you eat it, the more beautiful you become.

Even after I created our vegan version, the test kitchen lobe of my brain continued to riff. You could use just about any kind of soft herbs: chervil, tarragon, cilantro, mint. If the vegan part’s not important to you, you could swap dashi for leek broth, and maybe add a dash of white soy sauce, and lots of sliced scallions in place of the herbs.

Of course, if you want to keep it super-easy, you can use the store-bought chicken broth, as Krieger’s recipe does — do that, and it comes together in 25 minutes or less.

Ain’t that beautiful?

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Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh is one of our favorite salads, springtime through the summer

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Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh, prepared from a recipe in ‘Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking’ by Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook

By Leslie Brenner

Every spring, as the sun comes out, the earth warms up, and thoughts of picnics, patios and pool parties pervade, this deliciously optimistic Quinoa, Pea and Mint Tabbouleh finds its way to my table lickety-split.

From Michael Solomonov and Steven Cook’s superb 2015 book Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking, it’s one of my favorite things to eat all the way through summer’s end.

Easy to make, and from ingredients that are not hard to find (frozen peas!), it’s super-versatile. Serve it as a starter, part of a creative mezze spread, maybe, or a simple spring dinner. Or as a side dish with lamb, chicken or fish —or even as a vegan main course. It travels well and eats great at room temp, so it’s a dreamy dish to bring to a potluck or picnic. I love it on its own for lunch — especially when it’s leftover from the night before — either on its own, or stuffed into a whole-wheat pita pocket.

Because I’m so fond it it, I make sure to keep a bag or two of those petite peas in the freezer and quinoa in the pantry all spring and summer long. That way when I see fresh mint (or my potted one is in a giving mood), I can chop it all together.

Oh, just one thing: If you’re more than one or two people, consider doubling the batch. The few times I made just a single dose, I’ve kicked myself for not making more.