Three dinners: Asparagus pizza; Pasta primavera; Broiled salmon with red wine reduction

Pizza with sauteed onion and asparagus

For the pizza, saute onions in salt and olive oil until very tender, and use as the sauce. Then top with cubed fresh mozzarella, asparagus that you have broiled with some oil and balsamic vinegar, and sprinkle over everything some grated romano.

For the salad, add some mashed blackberries to your balsamic vinaigrette.

Grilled asparagus pizza

B had offered to make pizza on April 28, because I had a late seminar. I arrived home to a fantastic dinner:

Two pizzas: mushroom and tomato; asparagus

Sauteed veggies

This was an everything-in-the-fridge dinner. In butter we sauteed together spring onions, garlic, cauliflower, asparagus, carrots, mushrooms, beans, and fresh parsley. Go cook on low, and while there is liquid in the bottom of the pan cover to steam the cauliflower.

Salade Niçoise

In the salad:

• Chioggia beets, cooked in the oven, then halved and marinated in salted red wine vinegar
• Asparagus, cut on the diagonal and roasted in the broiler in a marinade of balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and black pepper
• Eggs, hard boiled 12 minutes, then plunged in ice water, peeled, and halved
• Nicoise olives
• Anchovy fillets
• Lettuce tossed in a garlic vinaigrette.

As we usually do, we served the salad with fresh bread and a rosé.

Seared tuna with asparagus and potatoes

Many short notes

• Large sweet potatoes should bake whole perhaps 45 minutes in a 400-degree oven. After 30 minutes, they are perfectly edible, if a bit crunchy.
  
• Snapper is very fast to pan-fry. Marinate lightly in lemon, salt, and black pepper, heat oil in a pan, and cook on both sides.
  
• Asparagus is in season, and extremely tasty steamed and salted.
  
• I highly recommend Lemon Grapefruit Bars. I used the zest and juice of one medium-large grapefruit.
  
• Wheat berry can simmer for an hour in roughly two-to-one salted water and remain very crunchy, or even an hour and a half in 2.5:1 water to grain, and then mixed with olive oil and salt, for a very simple dish. In general, with long-cooking whole grains, you should not worry too much about liquid-to-grain. Rather, check the grains twenty minutes before the end-time. If there is too much water, remove the lid and turn up the heat; if water is all out, keep covered, turn off heat, and let grains steam themselves for the remaining 20 minutes.