Cafe Liz

This mild-flavored dish plays with colors — white asparagus, purple potatoes. OK, maybe for some of you white asparagus isn’t such an oddity, but around here it is. In fact, it’s just beginning to make its presence felt in the market, as I described in a newspaper article.

The weather is beautiful, and the asparagus stalks at the market are looking like the fresh, young shoots that they are. Simply beautiful. I could take a bunch of asparagus and put it in a vase in my living room, but then I'd have a vaseful of asparagus in my living room. But you get the idea. In any case, asparagus this nice demands to be accompanied by other fine ingredients. When I decided I wanted to eat it with [...]

I was looking for a fresh way to prepare a springtime bunch of asparagus I picked up at the market — something light that would let the flavor of the asparagus dominate. This simple salad incorporates fresh herbs, another great springtime ingredient. I used a few leaves of sage and zaatar, which I have growing on my patio, but if you don’t have any zaatar, you could substitute oregano or thyme. I don’t recommend using dried spices, since that would [...]

Some people think unusually colored vegetables are, well, weird. My purple potatoes got mixed reactions at work tonight — ranging from excitement to politely (yet poorly) veiled disgust. I, for one, like colorful food, especially if all that color is natural. And this vegetable medley mixes all your basic Crayola colors. What’s more cool than that?