Spring Vegetables are so Beautiful!

This is some of what was at the market today. Coming from Chicago where spring-like weather lasts about 2 weeks I revel in the luxury of all things spring. These vegetables are: pre-cleaned artichokes, red "green" onions (I think they're called ramps), fresh fava beans in the pod, Roman puntarelle and Sicilian lemons. Well, o.k. the lemons are not strictly a spring thing. Reading the Becks and Posh blog, I found that the seemingly exotic puntarelle are actually available in California! So check out your grocery stores everybody, you might have something like this coming your way!

This is a bunch of puntarelle picked in its prime and ready to be pulled apart into its finger-like sections, each sliced really thin, submerged in ice water so they curl in to C-shapes and dressed with a garlic, anchovy, olive oil dressing. This New York Times article lays out a lot of the traditional cuisine of Rome including puntarelle. If you want to see what it looks like curled and in a salad, check out the Audio Slide Show.