Fresh Flavours for a New Season
An abundance of recipes to celebrate spring! Including our favourite sweet treats — a Silky Lemon Tart and a Basque Burnt Cheesecake. Plus a spring garden update from Annabel.
For us, the summer season begins at the spring equinox.
This is when we turn our clocks forward — marking the period where we will begin to have more hours of the day spent in sunlight than in darkness. Throughout history, and today still, numerous cultures and religions celebrate the spring equinox as the beginning of a new season of growth.
It is humbling (and important) to remember that as humans we still have this sense of connection to nature, and rely on the changes of the seasons in order to grow the food we need to survive.
For thousands of years, this is the way people have lived — connected with the land and working with the seasons. We feel lucky that we have built our life around a big vegetable garden, orchard and nuttery — it feels honest and resourceful and real. It’s also a lot of work — tending and feeding the soil, working without pesticides and chemicals to produce nutrient-dense, high-quality organic food, timing the plantings to ensure a flow through the season, and putting up the excess harvests as they flush — whether freezing spinach just before Christmas or bottling figs in late January. The thing you learn about growing food is that if you leave something that's ripe and ready it will just go to seed, that's what its job is. Picking is as important as planting. Even if you can't use it, pick it and give it away. Once a plant starts the process of going to seed the hormonal changes make it tough and often bitter.
In late September, the Wānaka garden is still sleepy — bundled up in straw, protected from the cold, and ready to wait out another frost (as we are so close to the Southern Alps, the climate down here is very volatile, and we can even get snowfall and late frosts in December).
Slowly, after months of hibernation, the garden begins to wake. First comes the snowdrops, their dormant bulbs burst into a carpet of white at the first whispers of warmth. Then in a parade of sweet smells and glorious colours come the daffodils, hyacinths, and anemones and the first new green leaves.
Annabel has been sharing weekly garden updates on Instagram, showing the progression of her spring garden and lots of beautiful blossoms. Be sure to keep an eye out for ongoing live updates from her Wānaka property.
Spring Vegetables
Apart from early salad greens, asparagus is the first of the vegetables to emerge after winter, their sweet green tips peeking out of the ground. Within a day they are ready to pick.
Asparagus season is just starting, and as soon as those first spears arrive, we recommend you make this simple Perfect Asparagus, that you may like to serve with this Roasted Fish with Lemon Caper Crumb. Our Asparagus, Spinach & Lemon Risotto, is excellent, as are these Herbed Asparagus & Ricotta Fritters that we developed for Summer at Home but ran out of space. They are so tender and delicious thanks to the inclusion of creamy ricotta.
On the salad-y side of things, this Asparagus, Snow Pea and Scallop Salad from Essential Volume 1 is divine and a great way to make a few scallops go a long way. Green beans can be used in place of asparagus, and prawns in place of the scallops if you like.
Our Fennel, Cress & Smoked Fish salad from Summer at Home is a winner for this time of year. The creamy dill dressing is utterly heavenly and is excellent with boiled new season potatoes. You can also serve this with a jammy egg or two (for the newcomers, a jammy egg is an egg that has been soft-boiled for 6–7 minutes, then cooled in cold water to prevent further cooking, resulting in a perfectly soft yolk).
The sweetness of spring vegetables is all the more after a long winter of humble root vegetables and sturdy greens. Spring’s new soft green leaves have hardly had any sun, and are so full of chlorophyll that they are the most intensely vibrant green. Even their taste is green.
After asparagus come radishes and the first of the snow peas (if we’ve gotten our seeds in time). We like to take inspiration from the French and serve baby radishes with chilled butter and a little salt.
This gorgeous Ricotta Pasta with Spring Vegetables from Summer at Home is another one of our favourite ways to celebrate the beginning of spring and the tender, delicate vegetables that come with it.
Fresh Flavours & Celebrations
New seasons are a lovely opportunity to bring people together and celebrate as we come out of our winter hibernation. With this in mind, we are sharing some inspiration for what a spring celebration menu could look like. There is no need to go overboard or spend a lot of money, spring festivities are about coming together to celebrate nature and new beginnings. So lay the table, light some candles, forage for a bit of blossom, and put on a cruisy playlist.
You could keep things chic and simple with a generous tart or pie and a big Green Salad. Annabel’s Sensational Spinach Tart from Essential Volume 1 is always a winner, as is our Herb & Feta Pie from Together. This Smoked Salmon & Leek Quiche is also fab. These all taste great with a crisp glass of chilled pinot blanc or chablis.
Aromatic tarragon is a herb that always reminds us of spring, its bright flavour pairs so well with tender spring vegetables. It’s put to good use in this recipe for Tarragon & Garlic Butterfly Chicken — slathering a simple herb and garlic butter all over a chicken before it gets roasted delivers a sensational flavour for very little effort. The butter is also yummy tossed through baby potatoes. Again, serve this chicken with a big salad and some new season’s asparagus, if you can lay your hands on it. A festive Rolled Lamb Shoulder is also great this time of year.
Alternatively, you could also take things in a Scandinavian direction and serve up a side of Hot-Roasted Salmon with Green Summer Sauce, asparagus, boiled baby potatoes, a big green salad, and garlicky Aioli. You can add a plate of jammy eggs into the mix if you like too.
For dessert, we suggest something slightly decadent that you can make ahead of time such as this Silky Lemon Tart that strikes the perfect balance between sweetness and tartness. We’re also excited to share a recipe for a heavenly Basque Burnt Cheesecake. This is one of those knock-your-socks-off, utterly delicious desserts that is sure to earn you praise. It keeps well, so you can make it ahead for a dinner party or special occasion when you want to impress.
If you love our recipes and want them in hard-copy, we have cookbooks! Essential Volume One: Best-Ever Meals for Busy Lives gathers more than 650 of Annabel’s best-ever savoury recipes. Packed with clever cooking tips, variations and springboard recipes demonstrating key techniques, it's a lifetime of cooking and eating inspiration and an essential kitchen handbook for today's busy lives.
As we look forward to summer, Summer at Home is our second best-selling cookbook collaboration — filled with everything you need for fresh, everyday eating in the warmer months. “Expect fuss-free seasonal food that’s not too difficult to replicate, but has bags of honest flavour and enough interest to keep your reputation at the next bring-a-plate.” — Cuisine Magazine
Autumnal Eating
For those of you reading this from the northern hemisphere (don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you!) we suggest you make the most of the last flush of summer produce.
Ratatouille is one of the best ways to savour the last of summer, and this recipe for Tray-Roasted Ratatouille is so easy and full of flavour. We love to toss it through pasta or serve it alongside some creamy polenta.
If you still have tomatoes, now is your final chance to make our Sicilian Tomato Pasta from Summer at Home or perhaps this Pan con Tomate. For tomatoes that are looking worse for wear — bottle up that sunshine in this Harvest Tomato Sauce.
The last of the zucchinis are put to good use in these Zucchini & Feta Crostini as well as this Summer Pasta with Zucchini & Broccoli.
If the temperature has dropped and you’re craving comfort, now is the time to make a Creamy Mushroom Risotto or perhaps a baked Eggplant Parmigiana.
What to Cook Tonight
We have been creating so many delicious new recipes over on What to Cook Tonight. As well as giving you occasional previews so that you can get an idea of what is going on over there, we also wanted to share this index that we created so you can see all the recipes. As you can see, there are already over 70 delicious dinners in there! We’ve also included the flavour profiles and seasons for your reference.
We are now at the six-month mark! This means that the earliest posts are now relevant for our northern hemisphere subscribers. We recommend you start cooking from What to Cook Tonight #1 which is all about late-summer, early autumn eating, and follow along from there.
As we look forward to the festive season, we’re going to include more bonus recipes for entertaining, plus the occasional sweet treat and dessert. If any of this piques your interest (and you haven’t done so already) consider supporting the work we do by becoming a paid subscriber today.
What are you most excited about for this new season? For Annabel, it is most certainly her spring garden and the tender green vegetables that come along with it. For Rose, heading into autumn, she is patiently waiting for Lisbon to cool down so that she can make soup, be cozy, and hunker down. Let us know what you’re most looking forward to in the comments below!
As always, you can find us at hello@langbein.com — we love to hear from you. We wish you our best for the new season, wherever you may be, and hope that you get an opportunity to cook some delicious things in the coming weeks.
With love,
Annabel & Rose xx
Your asparagus, lemon risotto is wonderful - a great alternative to lashings of butter sauce on the new season's asparagus.
Aaah, Spring. The flush of new growth in anticipation of summers warming rays. The first strawberries and bright green asparagus with the last of the citrus to sharpen their flavour even more. And now a host of new recipes to accompany my desire for fresh, crisp tastes. Happy days😊