Snow peas, fresh peas, asparagus and chives star in this bright green medley of spring vegetables bathed in a French-Asian fusion sauce. With the sun making timid appearances and the chestnuts finally in blossom, it’s beginning to feel like spring in Paris. I’d been planning to make this dish for a long time, and at last it was the right season. So I headed to the market, where spring veggies were out in abundance — except for snow peas…
Poêlée pois gourmands-petits pois-asperges / Spring veggie medley with snow peas
… And therein hangs a tale. But first, the recipe. The veggies are cooked until just tender and then immersed in a sauce of olive oil, sesame oil, soy sauce and balsamic vinegar, with chives snipped on at the end. The dish may be served either warm as a side or at room temperature as a salad. For example, I served this medley the other night alongside lamb chops cooked by my daughter (who had the brilliant idea of coating the meat with cumin and Chinese bean sauce). The flavors complemented each other beautifully.
The dish was all the more special because I rarely use snow peas, for a simple reason. They’re available in supermarkets, imported from Kenya or Guatemala, but they are rarely seen at farmers markets. I asked the man at my veggie stand about this. He was presiding behind tables laden with every spring vegetable you could imagine — artichokes, asparagus, peas in the pod, beautiful bunches of young turnips and carrots, fresh garlic, etc., but no snow peas. Why? ‘They’ve become too expensive for our clients,’ he said.
A few stalls down, I spotted some snow peas at a stand selling organic vegetables. They were homegrown. Good. But the price! At 14 euros a kilo, or about $7.50 a pound, that was too much for me. So I headed to the supermarket, hoping that a farmer in Guatemala would benefit somehow from my purchase.
Snow peas — known in French both as pois gourmands (‘delectable peas’) and as mange-tout (‘you can eat all of it’) — have been problematic for me before. I got into trouble a couple decades ago when I bet a friend that snow peas were actually just young peas. ‘Mais non’, she replied, ‘it’s a separate vegetable.’ We looked it up. I lost.
More recently, during lockdown, I began doing a lot of Chinese home cooking (mainly Sichuan) as restaurants were closed and we were feeling deprived. Snow peas sometimes featured in these meals, the recipes for which I often found on China Sichuan Food, one of my favorite cooking sites. But snow peas are still a relative rarity at our table. So I was all the more pleased when the snow pea medley turned out well.
If you prefer, you can make a Franco-French version of this dish simply by omitting the sauce and instead sautéing the veggies briefly in butter or olive oil once they are tender. Whichever method you choose, I have a belated message for you. Happy spring!
And happy cooking.
Succulent spicy meatballs served in broth with cream and topped with fresh dill — now that’s what I call comfort food with a capital C, except that this dish is light, not heavy. I first made it on a winter’s evening and have since repeated it many times as it proved very popular here at home. What inspired this creation? I may have had Swedish meatballs on my mind, but I added cumin, ground coriander, cayenne and cilantro to spice things up a bit…
This open-face pita sandwich with shrimp in curried mayo set on a bed of bacon and arugula and topped with fresh dill is an example of why I have often thought this site should be renamed ‘Meg Has Lunch’. Like many dishes proposed by The Everyday French Chef, it was invented one day when I went into the kitchen at lunchtime wondering what to make, checked the fridge to see what we had on hand and came up with a felicitous combination.
With Easter just around the corner, here are some seasonal recipes you may wish to try for a holiday meal: 
Longing for a hint of spring as the Paris winter drags on and on, I made a cheery pot of risotto with peas and fresh mint the other day. The inspiration for this dish was not my own. I first had it last summer at a beautiful English country pub, 
Making parmesan chicken, a family favorite, is simplicity itself. There are only two ingredients — the parmesan and the chicken (plus a little olive oil for pan-frying). Unlike other similar dishes where chicken is coated before frying, this lighter version involves no flour, no breadcrumbs, no egg. The grated parmesan is simply patted onto the chicken breasts, which are then lightly fried until golden, et voilà — dinner is served.
This salad of curly endive with bacon is a French bistro classic and it’s one of my favorites. I often serve it to friends at dinner parties, usually followed by another bistro dish, for example 
Let’s start with the lettuce. Salade frisée is displayed proudly in French farmers markets, its yellow heart framed by a dark green crown. This type of salad is huge. It can measure up to two feet (60 cm) in diameter when spread open. When I took the photo at right, it virtually covered the picnic table on my veranda. So unless you are cooking for an army, you won’t need all of it for your salad. What to do with the rest? Either a repeat performance or you can use it to make Italian lettuce soup, a recipe I hope to post one day soon.
Now the bacon. In France lardons, or bacon sticks, are sold precut in supermarkets. But for best results with this salad, it’s preferable to start with a thick strip of bacon — about 1/3 inch (1 cm) — and cut the lardons yourself. The flavor and texture are better, and your guests will appreciate it. If that’s not possible where you live, buy thick-cut bacon strips and chop them. My advice: be generous with the bacon. It’s the star of the show.
Roasted salmon on a bed of spicy lentils is a dish that delivers the comfort we crave in winter without too much heft. Here, the dish is paired with spinach for a combination that’s as pleasing to the eye as to the palette. I made this dish last week during a cold snap in Paris — below-freezing temperatures and snow that didn’t melt for days, a rare event over here. After fireside suppers featuring heavier winter dishes, the salmon made a welcome change.
As the cold is bound to return, both here and elsewhere, I thought I’d share some of the dishes I’ve been making to cheer this frigid season, in hopes of inspiring you. Over the last month or so I’ve served: 
After all that entertaining, I slowed down this month, mainly cooking for my daugher and myself, as well as a couple of guests. So far I’ve served 
A classic French bistro dish that’s particularly pleasant in winter is leeks in vinaigrette sauce. It’s incredibly quick and easy to make at home, and there are many variations: with mustard vinaigrette, balsamic vinaigrette, lemon vinaigrette, topped with shallots or not, topped with herbs or not, topped with chopped egg or not etc. etc. In today’s recipe, the leeks are steamed, then topped with mustard vinaigrette, chopped shallot and chopped parsley.
The recipe for these fluffy little pancakes came to me via my Grandma Anne, whose family hailed from a small Jewish village in Ukraine. She called them ‘cottage cheese pancakes’, which always baffled me since cottage cheese has curds and the cheese in these pancakes was perfectly smooth. Eventually, after spending time in the Soviet Union, I worked out that the original cheese involved must have been tvorog, a smooth white cheese.
Who invented butter-almond crescents, the sugar-dusted confections served at Christmas time in many parts of the world? Some say the cookies were invented by a Viennese baker who adopted the shape of the Ottoman flag’s crescent moon to celebrate victory over the Turks in the 17th century. But I’m not so sure, as crescent almond cookies exist far beyond Vienna. In North Africa, for example, they’re called gazelle horns…
