What to eat in spring: 10 recipes with seasonal products
Text: Daria Bigun
When the days get longer, and the street smells like spring, it's time to add variety to your diet. Seasonal vegetables, fruits and greens appear in the markets, and we tell you that you can cook interesting things from them. Recall that WHO recommends eating more than four hundred grams of fruits and vegetables every day.
Chicken with Spinach and White Wine
Spinach contains protein, fiber and vitamins - great for garnish. Small leaves of young spinach can be eaten raw, and larger ones are good for a couple or stewed.
Ingredients:
2 large chicken breast fillets
2 large handfuls of spinach
200 ml of dry white wine
15 sprigs of thyme
3 large cloves of garlic
1 teaspoon ground paprika
5 tablespoons butter
salt pepper
Cooking:
Grate chicken fillet with paprika, salt and pepper. Peel and chop the garlic and thyme.
In a pan, melt a tablespoon of butter and fry the chicken on medium heat - about three minutes on each side. Reduce heat, add remaining butter, garlic and thyme and cook for another couple of minutes.
Pour the wine into the pan, bring to a light boil and cook for 3-5 minutes. Add spinach, wait for its reduction in size, pepper and salt.
Before serving chicken with spinach can be poured over the sauce, which remained in the pan.
Pea soup with spinach, mint and cilantro
Bright green spring soup seems filled with vitamins. True, we remember that seasonal avitaminosis does not exist (and people with a real avitaminosis need more serious treatment than soup) - so we recommend this dish rather to lift the mood.
Ingredients:
300 g fresh or frozen peas
450 g of spinach
a couple of sprigs of mint
small bunch of cilantro
1 onion
2 potatoes
100 g of fresh cherry tomatoes or a small package of dried
1.5 tablespoons butter
650 ml vegetable broth
half a lemon
1 teaspoon olive oil
60 ml of 30% cream
salt pepper
Cooking:
If there are no dried tomatoes, you can cook them in the oven. It should be heated to 100 degrees, put the cherry tomatoes cut in half on a baking sheet with parchment and bake for three hours, stirring every hour. You can cook more and store stock in a sealed package.
Dice onions and potatoes. Heat the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add onions, potatoes and stir constantly for 3-5 minutes.
Add the vegetable broth to the pan and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the potatoes are tender.
Pour peas into a saucepan with vegetables and cook the mixture over low heat for a few minutes. Peas should be soft.
Add spinach to the pan with all ingredients and remove from heat. Stir and wait for the spinach to fade a little.
Beat the soup with a blender until smooth, gradually adding finely chopped mint and cilantro. Season with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Serve the soup warm or cold, after adding cream to the plate and decorating with dried tomatoes.
"Napoleon" with spinach, wild garlic leaves and cabbage
Layered cake, but not sweet, but with seasonal herbs and cream cheese. Combos of wild garlic, spinach and cabbage, perhaps, one of the most fresh and unexpected.
Ingredients:
500 g puff pastry
500 g spinach
300 g wild garlic leaves
1 head of young cabbage
1 small onion
2 tablespoons butter
300 g cream cheese
1 egg
salt pepper
Cooking:
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Grease a baking sheet with vegetable oil. Roll out the dough on a floured surface into a thin layer and cut into four identical rectangles. Each of them pierced with a fork, brush with egg and bake for 15 minutes.
Wash and sort the ramson, cut into thin strips. Remove the top leaves from the cabbage, cut the head in half, remove the stalk and chop the cabbage.
Peel and dice the onions. Add butter to the preheated pan and fry the onions for three minutes.
Add spinach, wild garlic and cabbage to the pan. Constantly stirring, cook for 15 minutes.
Transfer the vegetable mass to a bowl, add cream cheese, salt, pepper and mix thoroughly.
Three crust smeared with cheese and green stuffing, put them on top of each other and cover with the fourth cake crust. Heat the cake in the oven for 5-7 minutes.
Baked radish salad
Radish - one of the main spring plants, which you can love at least for a bright pink color. In addition, it contains a number of useful trace elements: potassium, magnesium, iron and fiber.
Ingredients:
20 radishes
2 tablespoons of olive oil
100 g of corn salad
half a cup of pine nuts
4 tablespoons sour cream
6 sprigs of mint
salt pepper
Cooking:
Preheat the oven to 230 degrees and cover the baking sheet with parchment.
Cut the radish in half, sprinkle with a teaspoon of salt, drizzle with olive oil and mix. Put on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes.
Get and cool radishes. Finely chop the mint leaves and mix with sour cream and the remaining olive oil. Add salt and pepper.
Put the salad corn on a plate and add radish. Sprinkle with dressing and sprinkle with pine nuts.
Puff ears with basil
Fragrant basil reminds you of trips to Italy, and adding it to dishes is always a good idea. However, a few leaves are enough for flavor, so a bunch of greens can be made mixed - for example, from basil, spinach and sorrel.
Ingredients:
1 leaf puff pastry
1 bunch of basil with other herbs
3 peeled garlic cloves
4 tablespoons of olive oil
coarse salt
Cooking:
Mix basil leaves, other herbs, garlic and olive oil in a blender until smooth.
Roll out the puff pastry in the form (about 30 to 40 centimeters) and distribute the puree of greens over the entire surface. Roll up the dough roll with two sides, moving to the middle.
Wrap the roll with food film and send for 10 minutes in the freezer.
Preheat oven to 210 degrees. Cut the roll into 20 slices ("ears") 1-1.5 cm thick. Spread out on a greased baking sheet, salt and bake for 15 minutes.
Avocado Mousse with Smoked Salmon
Avocado from exotic has long been a familiar fruit, which is added to soups, salads and desserts. In the spring, we recommend buying avocados from South Africa, where their season begins in April.
Ingredients:
200 g smoked salmon
a few sprigs of green onions
2 tablespoons of olive oil
half lime juice
salt pepper
4 ripe avocados
half lime juice
a bunch of chervil (wild parsley) can be replaced with a regular
3 natural yoghurt
Cooking:
Make an avocado mousse: cut the fruit into two parts, mix the pulp with yogurt, parsley, half lime juice, salt and pepper. Put in a large container, cover with cling film and refrigerate.
Finely chop smoked salmon, mix with chopped onion, olive oil, juice of half lime and pepper.
Arrange the cooled avocado mousse in four glasses, putting smoked salmon on top. Serve with fresh bread.
Cock with sorrel and goat cheese
Sorrel is not only about childhood soup. This herb perfectly complements the salad, and in combination with goat cheese and eggs it will be an invigorating and at the same time tender breakfast.
Ingredients:
8 fresh eggs
100-120 g of sorrel
goat cheese
tablespoon butter
8 teaspoons sour cream
salt pepper
Cooking:
Preheat oven to 240 degrees. Wash sorrel, remove hard stalks. In a saucepan, melt some butter and simmer the sorrel for about three minutes over low heat.
Spread the sorrel in the molds (coconuts), in each split two eggs, salt and pepper, add a few pieces of goat cheese and two spoons of sour cream.
Half fill a high baking dish with water, carefully place the small tins with eggs in it and bake in a water bath in the oven for 7-10 minutes. Serve with tomato salad.
Rhubarb puff
Rhubarb is a vegetable, but it can be used in dishes that are traditionally prepared with fruit. It is sweet and sour and refreshing - the true taste of spring.
Ingredients:
250 g puff pastry
200 g rhubarb
2 tablespoons cane sugar
1 egg
a pinch of cinnamon
powdered sugar
Cooking:
Cut the rhubarb into pieces 5-7 cm long, sprinkle with cinnamon, 1.5 tablespoons of sugar, mix and leave for 10 minutes.
Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Roll out the dough, cut into small rectangles. In the center of each put the rhubarb stalks, sprinkle with the remaining sugar. Brush the edges of the puffers with a beaten egg.
Bake for 15 minutes. Decorate with powdered sugar before serving.
Asparagus Pasta
A full dinner without cooking difficulties is pasta with vegetables. If you are tired of tomatoes and broccoli during the winter, we advise you to switch to fresh asparagus - especially as its thin stems prepare very quickly.
Ingredients:
400 g of any pasta
1 bunch fresh green asparagus
1 bunch fresh white asparagus
8 dried tomatoes
1 garlic clove
2 bunches of arugula
4 sprigs of chopped basil
2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 tablespoons grated parmesan
salt pepper
Cooking:
Prepare the pasta, slightly without cooking.
Cut the white and green asparagus into pieces and cook in salted water for five minutes.
Finely chop dried tomatoes. Chop a head of garlic, mix in a large saucepan with olive oil. Add ready-made pasta, dried tomatoes, half of basil, mix and allow for five minutes on low heat, stirring occasionally. Add asparagus.
The remaining basil mixed with a couple of tablespoons of water, in which asparagus was boiled, with olive oil and a tablespoon of parmesan, pepper. Add this sauce to the pasta.
Rhubarb and strawberry drink
“Lemonade” without lemon can be made a hit by a children's party, and you can enjoy it at an evening show instead of wine.
Ingredients:
4 glasses of water
8 medium rhubarb stalks
100-150 g strawberries
half a cup of sugar
2 tablespoons honey
orange juice and zest
a pair of thyme sprigs (optional)
Cooking:
Mix water, sugar, honey, orange juice and chopped zest in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and hold on the stove for another 7-10 minutes.
Peel rhubarb from hard fibers, cut into small pieces and send to the skillet. Add thyme, bring to a boil, then remove from heat and cool.
Heat again over low heat, add strawberries, bring to a boil, and then allow to cool at room temperature.
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