March is the month of great upheaval and change.
Unpredictable days are gray and damp then heartbreakingly blue or muffled suddenly by snow. Sap rises above the cold earth and into dark branches. Difficult March lays the groundwork for effusive April, who gets all the credit. Buds are tightly wound with the promise of spring, anticipation in floral form. The botanical clock has started to tick. Loudly.
In Central Park, Siberian squill mirrors the blue of the sky beneath soaring empty trees. Birds appear in The Ramble on exposed tree trunks—a blue nuthatch against the bark as it prospects for insects beginning to stir in the shallow sunlight. An Upper East Sider exercises her bunny on a leash on the green grass. Winter honeysuckle’s demure white flowers pump out their powerful lemony scent, the untidy shrub seducing and confusing passersby with its sprawling camouflage.
March begins yellow. The Cornelian cherries flower early, festooned with pollen umbels, the modest trees becoming golden silhouettes. All over the city daffodils start to unfurl, trumpeting sunlight from medians and window boxes. They turn the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s low green hills into England for weeks at a time, transfixing visitors who insinuate themselves among the flowers to pose for pictures. Forsythia, sudden and electric, spills over stone walls, its drab green summer hedge now an impenetrable yellow wall. In woodland thickets in Inwood and Staten Island, where dead leaves still dust the forest floor beneath bare trees, spicebush buds are a yellow constellation in the pale woods. On the floor of Prospect Park’s forest, the last in Brooklyn, an early bloodroot flower opens, innocent of the human litter that surrounds it.
Near home, around the corner on Pacific Street in Cobble Hill, the camellia I watch every year opens deep carmine, surprised at itself. As the beautiful flowers drop, someone in that brownstone arranges them on either side of the stoop steps, all the way to the front door. A stairway, perhaps, to heaven. A Dawn viburnum blooms on Warren Street. Its spicy flowers are followed by the first pale spring cherries, the delicate Prunus subhirtella, restrained in advance of the showgirl Kanzans in their can-can skirts that romp through the city in late April.
From the flower sellers on Atlantic Avenue I buy weekly bunches of daffodils. Next door, at Mr. Kim’s (properly Atlantic Fruit and Vegetable, but we call it Mr. Kim’s) I cheat, and buy green asparagus spears from parts south. Local asparagus is a month away.
We still like empty shorelines. On Vincent’s birthday, with high cirrus striping the washed sky, we take the subway to the end of the line and then board a bus bound for the Far Rockaways, part of the string of barrier islands that shelters New York from the Atlantic Ocean. Baguette and saucisson are packed, cameras are locked and loaded. Here, beyond the dunes, there is no spring profusion. The beach is austere; the only interruptions to its surface are the shells and smooth stones left by the retreating tide. Mussels cluster around exposed wooden pilings. We spread our kikoi on the sand and eat our picnic and sip our cool red wine quietly, finding respite from the cement and streets and traffic in this wide open silence, the collapsing waves, the wheeling seabirds. The sea is silver and blue, the seashore vegetation wind bitten, gray, and reclusive. We ride back into Brooklyn with salt in our hair.
I am impatient to start foraging again, and late in the month Vincent and I ride the A to its most northern stop, at Inwood Hill Park in Manhattan to look for field garlic in the unlittered woods. I find its flavor more intense and sweeter when cooked than that of ramps. Field garlic is ready for pulling earlier in the season, too. Gathering it beneath the old tulip trees and red oaks, with violets and Dutchman’s breeches blooming in the dry leaf litter and a suggestion of gauzy leaves overhead, I feel spring fizzing in my blood. We find an artist in the woods, an elderly Korean man who makes wide and swirling circles in the humus, meticulously swept and maintained, and who has trained a woodpecker to eat from his hand. We ride home, our garlic pungent in the subway car, Vince shifting uneasily as his French nose prickles at our own growing presence. New passengers sniff the air speculatively.
Farmers’ markets are turning from shades of earth to rainbow palettes of contradiction and temptation. Heaped in crates and baskets are last year’s apples and potatoes and root vegetables. Potted plants that have been forced to bright succulence in greenhouses turn the nursery tables into explosions of muscari and hyacinth, violas and pansies, all weeks ahead of the weather’s schedule. In what remains of the Flower District, on its 28th Street sidewalks, heavily scented narcissus tilt beside primroses and ranunculus whose petals do not stand a chance against the freezes that still swoop down upon the city with little warning.
But this is New York. If you want it now, you can buy spring early.
If I were forced to choose the one dish I like best, it would be roast chicken. Crackly skin, sticky juices, a bed of potatoes. It is open to limitless variation, suggested by the seasons—those without and those within.
SERVES TWO HUNGRY PEOPLE, WITH LEFTOVERS 
2 strips of bacon, sliced crosswise into ribbons
1 cup (100 g) finely chopped field garlic, white and green parts
1 cup (110 g) bread crumbs
Zest of 1/4 lemon
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup (38 g) crumbled feta cheese
Freshly ground black pepper
Salt
1 medium chicken, rinsed and patted dry
5 medium potatoes, cut into thin rounds
3 sprigs thyme
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup (240 ml) water or white wine or vermouth
Preheat the oven to 450°F (220°C).
Make the stuffing: In a skillet over medium heat, cook the bacon until its fat is rendered. Add the field garlic and sauté until translucent. Add the bread crumbs, stirring to coat evenly with the bacon fat and garlic. Add the lemon juice and zest. Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the feta. Add pepper to the stuffing and taste for salt.
Make the chicken and potatoes: Gently stuff the chicken. Arrange the sliced potatoes in a roasting pan with the thyme. Season with salt and pepper. Set the chicken on top of the thyme. Squeeze the lemon juice over the chicken, and then season the bird’s skin generously with salt and pepper. Add the water or wine to the pan—this forms the basis of the delicious, sticky pan juices.
Put the pan in the oven and do not look at it for an hour. After an hour, check on the liquid and add more water or wine if the pan is dry. After another 15 to 20 minutes, remove the chicken. Let it rest for 10 minutes in the pan before carving. The skin will be perfectly crisp, the meat moist, the juices caramelized, sticky, and slightly tart. Remove the stuffing from the chicken. Carve the bird and arrange the pieces in the pan on the potatoes, with the stuffing served on the side.
Tentative gardening on the little terrace begins. I am longing to touch the soil, to plant, to see movement. At street level, life is rising inside trees and stirring under the ground, and my elevated and cold island becomes the laboratory for a premature gardener’s itch.
I consider the fig, carefully. There is nothing I can do about it, but every March I wonder whether I really see faint green at the tips. Has it survived? Or has my root pruning killed it? On the edge of the terrace it receives a full day of sun, from sunrise to sunset, its stiff branches basking in the sunlight and all the promise of figs to come starting to percolate in its hidden veins.
The dull green boxwoods show no obvious signs of life. Leaning in closer, though, I can see that they are forming long, tight buds which, in warmer weather, will turn into a brilliant and tender green ripple of new growth all over their trimmed forms.
Because the terrace is protected, the soil in the pots is usually workable by now and I dig down to see what has become of the lilies. Which ones have rotted in the vicious freeze-thaw cycle, and which have multiplied? I reorganize and replant, getting my hands dirty with the good smell of cold earth. In the gravel at the base of the pots the pale blue violets begin to bloom. This is spring!
The first herb to shows signs of life is the tarragon. Growing in an improbably tiny pot, it sends up soft new shoots smelling faintly of anise when I crush a leaf between my cold fingers. I control myself and allow it to grow another few inches. The chives show sappy, stunted emerald spikes, still trapped in papery white sheaths before bursting free and forming compact mounds. Like a herbivore deprived of my grazing, I stare at them intently. Estorbo’s catnip has downy gray leaves crowding compactly around the dead stalks of last year’s stems. The tiny seedlings of calamintha have started to emerge. Hundreds. Feeling guilty, I pull them up one by one, knowing that a time must come when their tenacious roots will make weeding a chore. Their piercing minty fresh breath stings the March morning.
I prune the shrub roses hard. While cold weather lingers in the city the roses break dormancy early against their protected, east-facing wall and new red shoots emerge. If the month has been wet and warm, precocious rosebuds form, weeks ahead of roses on the street. A shipment of bare root roses arrives from David Austin—a new Abraham Darby, and a red Munstead Wood. I soak the spindly roots in water and plant them carefully and doubtfully. They seem bereft of life.
I plant. Hungry for fresh salad leaves, I sow the first crop of the new year’s greens on the roof farm and on the terrace edge: mizuna, mustard, wild arugula, winter cress, spicy microgreens. I soak dry peas and fava beans and plant them in big pots, cold weather crops for salads in April. I cover the pots and troughs with chicken wire against the neurotic digging of the roof squirrels and the unwelcome presence of foreign cats. By month’s end the seedlings have emerged and I thin them, crunching the slender discards greedily. Estorbo, excited about gardening and good smells and fresh shoots, watches me hungrily, chewing any offered greens with whiskery pleasure.
March is my unorthodox month for planting garlic on the roof farm, for a crop harvestable by midsummer. Organic, store-bought heads are separated into cloves and planted an inch below the surface of some nice, fluffy, twelve-inches-deep soil mix, leaving half a hand’s breadth between cloves. As I work on the exposed silvertop roof, the Staten Island ferry barks its long departure horn and moves into the thin white mist that hovers over the water of New York Harbor.
Indoors and impatient, I sow trays of summer seeds, greedy for crops to come: bush beans, eggplants, cucumbers, ancho peppers, squash. Tomatoes. Watermelons. One can hope. Outdoors I plant instant pansies. They can withstand a freeze. Their color among the red pots and lifeless perennials seems wonderful.
The promise of the early garden disappears overnight. Sometime in the night the traffic on the street becomes hushed and the small window in the bedroom, open to the cold air, sends in the quilted sound of wheels on snow. Beneath a thick white cover spring seems unavoidably but deliciously detained. I relish this delay in the beginning of the inevitable.
I hear geese in the night. Flying high. I love this fugitive sound of life on the move, of seasons heeded. In daylight I hear them again and rush out to the terrace, look up into the arc of blue, and find them. They are white. Snow geese. Heading north-northwest.
By the end of the month the tender climbing rose leaves have turned bright green and a lily shoot has broken the surface in one of the largest pots on the terrace. It looks crisp and delicious.
Clearly, I am delirious.
I can’t bear to throw away the long-legged seedlings that I thin from my various sowings of early salad leaves. They are the first succulent green things I have seen in months. I nibble a few on the spot, but then I have to make this ritual dish, every early spring, to prolong my enjoyment of the pale stalks and their monocot leaves. And mozzarella is not just for tomatoes (though by March I am already gritting my teeth to avoid buying the ubqiutous store-red sirens, knowing I have months yet to go …).
You can re-create this salad at any other time of year using pea shoots or sprouts in place of leaf thinnings.
SERVES TWO
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup (60 ml) sherry vinegar
1 medium beet, peeled and sliced thinly into rounds
1 (9-ounce/260-g) ball buffalo mozzarella, sliced thickly
A handful of salad leaf thinnings, roots sniped off, stems and leaves intact
Excellent extra-virgin olive oil
Freshly ground black pepper
In a small bowl, dissolve the sugar and salt in the vinegar. Add the beet slices. Leave the beets to marinate for 30 minutes, turning them once or twice, for an instant pickle. Drain the brine from the beets.
On two small plates, alternate slices of pickled beet and mozzarella. Top with the salad leaf thinnings. Drizzle some olive oil across the top and finish with a quick grinding of black pepper.
March remains very cold, with temperatures plummeting at night. The still-long evenings call for cooking that warms the apartment, something that will seem like a claustrophobic memory, come thick July and August.
Short ribs are a cold-season party staple—a low-fuss, deeply satisfying and economical main course to serve to friends just in from the cold. If you have leftovers, the risotto they make the next day is almost better than the main event. The potato gratin cooks while the ribs are braising. A robust salad is an excellent tonic to counteract the over-anticipation of spring fever, a pairing of bitter with sweet.
While oranges are a deceptively simple end to a meal, the peeled fruit absorbing its bath of rich Cointreau looks as beautiful as it tastes, and the straightforward, familiar flavor is enhanced by the alcohol. And after all that wonderful meat, the oranges’ antioxidants have work to do.
Short Ribs with Field Garlic and Red Wine
Potato Gratin with Cream, Garlic, and Thyme
Oranges Macerated in Cointreau
Pink wine seems like a party. The bitterness of the orange oils rubbed onto the sugar cube speak to the dessert of fresh fruit, and create a neat bookend for this menu.
MAKES ONE DRINK
1 sugar cube
1 strip of orange peel
Sparkling rosé, chilled
Rub the orange peel against the sugar cube and drop the cube into the bottom of a Champagne flute. Top with sparkling rosé (or Champagne, you reckless devil).
I enjoy bitter flavors as long as there is some relief in sight, and the radicchio is offset perfectly by sweet raisins, crunchy endive, and a hit of warm acid from the white balsamic vinegar. Adding the thinnings from my spicy mesclun salad crop gives a final, peppery crunch.
SERVES SIX
1 head round purple radicchio
3 heads treviso (or Belgian endive)
1/2 cup (120 ml) white balsamic vinegar (or substitute an equal amount white wine vinegar plus 1 tablespoon sugar)
1/3 cup (48 g) golden raisins
FOR THE WHITE BALSAMIC VINAIGRETTE
1 tablespoon white balsamic vinegar
Pinch of salt
Freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons walnut oil
TO SERVE
1 cup (55 g) salad leaf thinnings, roots trimmed (substitute hot microgreens or wild arugula)
1/4 cup (28 g) toasted pecans, roughly chopped
Make the salad: Peel off the leaves from the head of radicchio and tear into large pieces. Separate the treviso or endive leaves and slice each heart in half lengthwise.
In a small pan over low heat, warm the vinegar until it starts to simmer, and then add the raisins. Poach the raisins very gently over very low heat for 5 minutes. Allow to cool. Remove the raisins from the vinegar and set aside.
Make the vinaigrette: In a large bowl, just before serving, whisk together the vinegar, salt, pepper to taste, and the oil.
Add the radicchio, treviso or endive, and raisins to the bowl with the dressing and toss. Plate on a shallow platter and toss the spicy seedlings or microgreens and nuts over at the last minute (too early and the nuts will absorb the dressing and become soggy, and the tender thinnings will bruise in the vinegar).
Short ribs are a very versatile cut of beef, falling off the bone when cooked long and gently, or juicy when sliced rare off a summer grill.
If you don’t have field garlic popping out of your lawn or in a nearby wood or field, substitute scallions or ramps. Failing those, small, peeled shallots would be delicious, too.
SERVES SIX
6 short ribs, sawn in half so each piece is about 4 inches (10 cm) long, on or off the bone
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
2 cups (200 g) field garlic bulbs and greens (discard the tough stem part)
2 cups (480 ml) red wine
8 juniper berries
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
Season the short ribs with salt and pepper. Allow to sit for 5 minutes so that some of the juice is drawn out. This will help caramelize the outside of the meat.
Warm a heavy pan over high heat. When it is very hot sear the short ribs, about a minute to a side, until just brown. Do this in batches; do not overcrowd the pan or it will lose too much heat. Remove the short ribs and set aside on a plate.
While you are browning the meat, blanch the field garlic bulbs for a minute in boiling water. Drain and set aside.
Place half the field garlic in the bottom of a roasting pan. Add the short ribs, the rest of the field garlic, the red wine, and juniper berries. Transfer the pan to the oven and cook for 2 hours, tented with foil. Uncover and cook for another 45 minutes, making sure that there is still liquid in the pan. Add water if the pan looks dry.
Serve straight from the pan or from a warmed bowl, scraping up as much juice as possible and spooning it over the ribs.
In one of my favorite books, Bistro Cooking, Patricia Wells provides ten recipes for potato gratin. I knew I liked the lady. Gratins, like chickens, lend themselves to endless variation, all with satisfying differences in character.
Potatoes are best friends with butter, cream, and milk. A rich gratin is easily a main course in its own right, a cold day lunch, perhaps, served with a green salad. Pairing it with ribs is over the top, but, as my father says, “Life is nothing without excess.”
Occasionally.
A rectangular ceramic or enameled baking dish with sides about 3 inches (7.5 cm) high is perfect. A heavy frying pan works just as well.
SERVES SIX
8 medium-large potatoes, peeled
2 1/2 cups (600 ml) milk
1/4 cup (60 ml) cream
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
6 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves pulled from stems
4 cloves garlic, sliced paper thin
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
Slice the potatoes very thin. Combine the milk and cream in a separate bowl.
Grease the baking dish generously with 1 tablespoon of the butter. Cover the bottom of the pan with a layer of overlapping potato slices. Sprinkle them with some thyme leaves and garlic slices, and season with salt and pepper. Repeat with layers of potatoes and more thyme, garlic slices, and salt and pepper until you have almost reached the top of the dish. Leave about 1/2 inch (12 mm) free to accommodate bubbling liquids (which could spill over and cause a terrible stink in the oven—ask me how I know). Pour the milk and cream mixture carefully over the potatoes. The liquid should just reach the uppermost potato layer. If it does not, add some additional milk or water. Dot little flecks of the remaining tablespoon of butter over the top.
Bake for 90–120 minutes, cooking the potatoes to creaminess with a brown top. Serve at the table directly from the baking dish.
Oranges are in peak season, and the ubiquitous and taken-for-granted citrus fruit becomes sophisticated when peeled of all pith, sliced, and chilled thoroughly in a shallow bath of Cointreau and sugar. It is a light, easy dessert. Candied orange zest adds another layer of pleasure.
If you are Cointreau-deprived, good brandy, tequila, or Cognac work well.
SERVES SIX
6 medium oranges
1/2 cup (100 g) sugar
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1/4 cup (60 ml) Cointreau
Peel the orange zest from 2 oranges in strips as long as you can manage, cutting from the top to the bottom of the orange to keep the strips as straight as possible. Reserve the peeled oranges. Cut each strip of zest lengthwise into slivers. Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil and blanch the strips of zest for 1 minute. Pour off the water and return the zest to the saucepan with the sugar and 1 cup (240 ml) water. Bring to a boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then reduce the heat and cook at a low simmer until tender and syrupy, about 25 minutes.
Remove any remaining pith from the reserved peeled oranges.
Peel the remaining 4 oranges, discarding the peels and pith.
Slice the peeled oranges fairly thinly crosswise. Take out any pips with the point of a knife. Arrange the sliced oranges in a pretty, shallow serving bowl or plate. Sprinkle the sugar over the fruit and pour the Cointreau over all the slices. Refrigerate, covered, for at least 4 hours, spooning the juices back over the fruit several times. Top the cold orange slices with candied orange zest and some of the sticky, slightly bitter syrup leftover from candying.
