Pesto green bean and potato salad

    I was in the market for something to do with these pretty blue potatoes, although sadly they lose some of their vibrancy when cooked.

Pesto, Potato and Green Bean Salad
From "Eat More Vegetables" by Tricia Cornell, a Minnesota author who set out to help us cook through the excess of a CSA basket or overly ambitious farmers market run. It's organized by season, with ideas for making the most of the bounty. She's not a vegetarian, although many of the options in the book qualify, and completely non-preachy. 

I heard about this book courtesy of a fellow book grouper, who has tried many recipes from the book and claims to have never encountered a dud. She baked a trio of tasty tarts from this book for a recent book group in honor of tome of the month, "The Moveable Feast." Another fabulous menu from Chez Lynn. With her endorsement, I checked the book out of the library to try it out myself. (Given that my cookbook shelves are already overrun, a trial run seemed in order.) I've already renewed it once, and I'm hoping an upcoming vacation will give me time to explore it more fully.


Ingredients:
1 pound small potatoes, scrubbed and cut into bite-size pieces
1 pound green beans
1/2 cup pesto

Method:
Place potatoes in a saucepan. Sprinkle with salt and cover with a generous amount of cold water. Bring to a boil and cook until just tender, probably less than 20 minutes. Rinse in cold water and drain.

Trim ends off green beans, snap into pieces. Steam until tender, then plunge into cold water or the freezer to stop cooking process.

Place potatoes and beans in a serving bowl. Toss with pesto. Season with salt if needed. (If you're using purchased pesto instead of your own, there's probably enough salt involved already.)  Serve at room temperature. Serves 8.

Rating: Not bad, and fast. A different variation on potato salad that's good for picnic purposes since there's no mayo involved.

I used a mix of wax and green beans to add even more color.

Fresh pea soup

This recipe is sort of spring meets fall. It's designed to use fresh spring peas and herbs for a bright fresh flavor. But in my case, instead of fresh pea soup, it's really not-quite-so-fresh pea soup. I had harvested some end of season stragglers and then not gotten around to cooking them immediately. They weren't quite ready to sprout, but were definitely not super fresh. But these were my peas from my garden, so of course I couldn't just give up on them. This recipe turned out to be a great way to revive them. It melds the bright spring flavors of spring pea soup with the autumnal flavors of split pea soup that come from more mature peas.

Fresh pea soup

Adapted from Ina Garten, aka Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients

2 tablespoons butter

2 cups chopped leeks, white and light-green parts only

1 cup chopped onion

4 cups chicken stock

5 cups freshly shelled peas (or 20 ounces of frozen peas)

3 tablespoons fresh tarragon leaves

2 teaspoons salt

Pepper

6 tablespoons crème fraiche

4 tablespoons chopped fresh chives

Method

Melt butter in large saucepan. Add leeks and onion; cook until softened. Add chicken stock. Cover and bring to a boil. Add peas and cook until peas are tender. (If your peas are fresh, this might be as few as 10 minutes, or up to 20 if you're working with peas past prime.) Remove from heat. Add tarragon, salt and pepper. Puree the soup in batches.

Dish soup into serving bowls if serving immediately. Add about a tablespoon dollop of crème fraiche to each bowl; it will melt into a pool in the middle. Sprinkle with fresh chives and serve. Serves about 6.

Make-ahead tip: You can prepare the soup through the puree stage and either refrigerate or freeze it. Then reheat and add crème fraiche and chives.

Rating: Really nice bright flavors even without fresh peas, and I'm sure it would be fab if I'd actually had really fresh peas on hand. Definitely repeatable, and definitely better than peas porridge in the pot nine days old, which never sounded like a winner. (Oh, and if you're one of those people who don't like tarragon, the original recipe calls for oodles of mint, which I of course didn't use since I think it's nature's way of trying to kill me.)