The skies are clear and cool. The hills are blooming with mustard, lupin, and poppies. Spring is on the horizon, and it’s stirring our taste for green goodness. So it’s time for some green goddess.
Our international house of spatchcock is bringing back the green goddess chicken. We’re also bottling the green goddess dressing to dip your chicken, dress your little gems, sugar snap peas, beets, and avocados, or dollop it on some ora king salmon or crab cakes.
That’s right! Crab cakes are back. Loaded with lump crab and claw meat, just sauté them in butter and serve with a squeeze of lemon. (These also freeze well.)
Mel is also making some sauce remoulade; hers is a little lighter and herbier than the classic New Orleans version, –it’s great on crab cakes and salmon, or you can make celery root remoulade with the celeriac we’ll be getting at the market.
For another easy and satisfying project to make at home, we’ll have Niman Ranch St. Louis-style spare ribs and our BBQ sauce. (We will provide a recipe for making them in your oven.) My kids are suckers for a sweet caramelized salmon, and we recently finished off our last batch of Mel’s BBQ sauce on some broiled salmon, ate it with cornbread, black-eyed peas with cone cabbage, and can’t wait to do it all over again.
For a heat and serve family favorite, we’re bringing back the phenomenon known as Mississippi pot roast, which has captured and clogged the hearts of much of America. I first tasted this concoction (cooked with dry ranch dressing mix and beef “au jus,” a stick of butter, and a jar of pepperoncini) from a crock pot in rural Michigan. It might seem grotesque, but it’s actually sublime. And Miss Mel’s version doesn’t have all the artificial ingredients, just shredded beef in decadent jus ready to heat and sandwich in a bun or roll or serve over potatoes and celery root.
For sides, our friends at Forage are making us a batch of their dreamy, creamy macaroni and cheese with breadcrumb topping, ready to go in the oven or freezer. And Chef Michelle is making vegetarian black-eyed peas, which would go great with some sweet potatoes and greens from the produce box. We’ve also got one of our favorite pickles, Coldwater Canyon Provisions’ dilly green beans. And keeping it domestic, we got some Hook’s 5-year-aged cheddar from Mineral Point, Wisconsin. It’s good enough to snack on but can also elevate eggs, pimento cheese, or a breakfast biscuit sandwich.
So, of course, we have frozen buttermilk biscuits from Proof, our favorite employee-owned bakery. You can serve these with dinner or load them with butter and Coldwater Provisions’ blueberry jam. If you’re a blueberry lover, this is a highly efficient method of sating the ever-elusive blueberry quota. It’s just loose enough to spoon over blintzes or soak into inky pancakes, so Mel is making a classic pancake mix with Tehachapi’s Sonora flour and without any stabilizers or fillers. To complete our breakfast dreams, we also have Peads and Barnetts’ breakfast sausage and sliced Neuske bacon.
And for something sweet and southern, we have Cake Monkey’s decadent pecan bars, brown butter pecan pie filling on a shortbread crust with cocoa nibs on top.