Suddenly there is a new energy. Paper bundles of English asparagus, so fresh and perky they could be still growing, have replaced the boxes of wizened roots at the greengrocers. Brussels sprouts have stunk their last until next Christmas. Great green shoots of purple sprouting broccoli are the hippest veg right now. Treat them as you would asparagus and don't even think of using a fork. This is what we mean now when we talk about finger food. Get everything into boiling water as quick as you can, asparagus and purple sprouting wait for no one.
Learn to make the perfect hollandaise, you'll need it for dunking all the season's green shoots and for the wild salmon too. But if beating egg yolks and butter over hot water till thick enough to stand on the end of your asparagus sounds like too much work, try this instead; while your vegetables boil in deep, salted water, finely grate hard pecorino or Parmesan onto warm plates. You'll need a small mound on each. Drain the purple sprouting and asparagus, then lay them tenderly on the plates. Remember how fragile those tips are. Shower them with fruity, emerald olive oil(this is the time to use the expensive stuff) then gently turn the shoots over in the oil and cheese. Squeeze a lemon over and eat.
The tiny Jersey potato, barely bigger than a jelly bean has come to save us from another month of baked and mash. Go for the smallest. anything larger than a pebble will need scraping. Push off the loose skins with your thumb, give them a decent scrubbing then wrap them in baking parchment with a sprig or three of mint and a spray of mineral water. Bake them at 200°c/Gas 6 till they will take the point of a knife. Tear the paper apart and breathe in pure earthy potato and cool mint. Spear your potatoes on your fork and dunk them in crème fraîche, or better, put pots of thick, live sheep's yoghurt on the table instead. Its smart flavour flatters rather than smothers.
Italian green produce, a month or more ahead of ours, is irresistible. The broad beans the size of a baby's thumbnail and baby peas can be boiled briefly, then scattered over soft, milky ricotta and drizzled with olive oil and torn mint leaves. I have had this as a light supper twice recently, scooping up the cheese and beans with hunks of warm and fluffy ciabatta. The oil was Wolfango Jezek's startlingly grassy U Trappitu - and the intenso pressing at that - from esperya.com. An oil so emphatically lush I reserve it for dipping my bread, yet the warmth from the freshly cooked little beans made it even more creamy and grassy. You could throw the little beans in a salad too, perhaps one with Little Gem and a lemony dressing.
Wild salmon should be the fish of the month. But seriously, who can afford it? We have a choice: either inhale deeply and shell out now or wait a few weeks and hope the price comes within reach. We must get our fill, though. The April to August season is all too short. Crab is in fine shape right now: try it with cucumber sliced so thinly you could read this paper through it, and a dressing of very light olive oil, coriander and lime juice. Be delicate with the juicy white flesh, chopping the herbs finely and meticulously shaving the cucumber. Look out too for crawfish, salmon trout, lobster and mackerel.
Meat eaters look forward to the pale flesh and crisp white fat of jelly-textured spring lamb, but it has never done it for me. It is fine line between delicate and insipid and the first lamb of the season crosses the line. Why not wait till later in the season, when this meat has a denser grain and actually has something to say.
Chicken is in good supply right now, and organic free-range birds are getting easier to track down. But chicken is far from the only bird. It is tempting to leave cooking duck to restaurants. Their repertoire: the time-honoured caneton a l'orange; the perennially popular Peking roast with plum sauce and pancakes and the gooey French confit is something better left to professional hands. (It must be said they can also get it wrong. Restaurants are the sole perpetrators of the disgusting, tepid fan of almost-raw duck breast and its accompanying mange tout garnish.) Where we home cooks excel is in a good old-fashioned roast duck, properly cooked and stuffed with sage and onion. Okay, the smell lingers a bit, but the juicy, verging-on-the-gamey meat is worth it. Forget everything you have ever read about this bird being served rare. This is one meat that only tastes of anything when its flesh is brown and its flesh crisp. Treat it as the feast it is and offer up a whole bird between two.
And don't forget to save the fat (I pour some of it off as the bird is cooking) for roasting potatoes. So good are they that last Wednesday I sat down to a supper of nothing more than potatoes roasted in duck fat and a bowl of green salad. The crucial bit was being generous with the salt on the hot, sticky potatoes and the fact that the salad was full of hot rocket - currently from Italy but the British crop will be along soon - and juicy, crunchy Little Gem lettuces.
Outdoor-grown rhubarb is the only indigenous fruit till the gooseberries and very early strawberries show their faces next month. We can, and should, make a crumble. If only to remind ourselves of just how well this sharp fruit marries with the sweet butter, flour and sugar topping. Bake a rhubarb cake to eat warm with thick yellow cream. Or roast the stalks, cut into stubby lengths, in orange juice and a little sugar. You will open the oven after half an hour and find melting rhubarb and copious crimson juice. Eat hot with warm sponge cake or madeleines or eat thoroughly chilled aside a little mound of equal quantities of thick yoghurt and whipped cream.
Rhubarb apart, this is a dodgy time for pudding lovers. Too warm for spotted dick, too early for strawberries. Now is the time to dig out classic recipes for forgotten puddings such as treacle tart, Eve's pudding, lemon Meringue pie and Bakewell tart. Best recipes are probably in your mother's battered Constance Spry. My money is on rice pudding. Make it by simmering 100g short-grain rice to 500ml water, 500ml milk and 50g sugar(I really think the fashion for using double cream here is quite unneccesary) till the rice is puffed and tender. Shake over a little rosewater and the finely ground seeds of 3 or 4 green cardamons while it is still simmering. Then cool and tuck in to the scented, creamy, soporific grains. A quiet and reflective moment in a month of renewed, raw energy.
