March is a hard month for cooking. It feels like it should be spring – we’re so ready for the sunshine and for green to return to the trees! And, perhaps more pressing, we are ready for winter to be over. Even though I escaped Boston for 5 weeks in January and early February, I’m still ready for it to be over. We’ve had a handful of sunny days this month, but here in Massachusetts, it’s still very much winter. As evidenced by the windchill of -6°F this weekend and the Nor’easter bearing down on us today.

By extension, March is a hard month for food blogging. There’s no local produce to inspire, no major food holidays. Just a craving for summer mixed with the reality of winter. In past years, I’ve posted everything from Butternut Squash Carbonara to Apple Cider Doughnuts to Strawberry Balsamic Salad – no seasonal cohesion to speak of.

It’s a transitional eating period, but instead of the abundance of September and October, we’re left with the dregs of the root cellar. We’re still at least a month away from the first tender greens and peas. We’re no longer excited about brussels sprouts and squash. All we want is the first cocktail-on-the-porch Saturday afternoon.

So this year, I’m making a concerted effort to come up with and share recipes that are appropriate for March. Recipes that are warm and nourishing without being heavy and rich. Recipes that shift towards spring without leaving you unsatisfied. They all have an element of brightness. I hope they will help inspire you in the kitchen this month while we wait patiently for spring.

This Salmon en Papillote with Potatoes and Dill Butter is an easy weeknight meal that perfectly fits the bill. Salmon is a richer fish, still fatty and satisfying, but not heavy like a roast or stew. The dill butter adds a bright, herbal note and makes it feel a little fancy. As a bonus, it’s one of the simplest recipes on this blog and its pretty healthy. The trifecta for dinner recipes: tasty, healthy, easy.

Tell me, is there anything that’s a staple in your kitchen while you wait for spring?

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Salmon en Papillote with Dill Butter

Recipe adapted from Simple by Diana Henry. Serves 2.

• 4 TBS salted butter
• 3 TBS finely chopped fresh dill
• pinch sea salt
• 6 small red or white potatoes
• Two 6 oz. salmon fillets
• 2 TBS dry white vermouth

1. Mix the softened butter and chopped dill together in a small bowl until thoroughly combined. Sprinkle with sea salt. Cover and chill in the fridge until ready to use.
2. Thinly slice the potatoes and add to a medium pot. Cover with cold water. Season lightly with salt and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil just until the potatoes are tender, about 8 minutes. Drain the potatoes and set aside.
3. Preheat the oven to 400°F. Cut out four squares of parchment paper that are about 1 foot long/wide. Double up the squares so there are two in a stack. Place a knob of dill butter in the middle of each stack, then layer potato slices over the butter. Place a piece of salmon on top of the potatoes, then top with a few dots of dill butter and a little sea salt. Pour 1 TBS of vermouth over each piece of fish. Bring two edges of the packets together over the fish and fold down a few times, then twist the open ends to seal the packets. Place on a rimmed baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes, until the salmon is just cooked through. Unwrap carefully at the table and serve.

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It’s your favorite guest poster! Trevor is here with his latest creation, pumpkin butter and cream cheese danishes, made from our very own home-grown pumpkins. These danishes are incredibly delicious, and I think they’re multiplying while I’m at work, as we seem to have an infinite supply that gets replenished every time I think I’ve polished off the last one. Raise your hand if you want one! Just kidding, I’m keeping these (and their baker!) all to myself. But you can definitely have the recipe.

Last summer, my greatest garden wish was to have a super wild, super productive squash patch in our garden. This year, we got exactly that, and we learned there is a lot of value in order. We spent a solid chunk of the summer in our new patch tracing out vines from the winter squash and melons as they wound around and underneath our mounds of summer squash and zucchini plants. Half the trick was trying to find all the zucchini before they became giant inedible monsters. We definitely owe Katie’s dad for sacrificing his wildflower field, which will hopefully regrow in it’s new location, and for tilling the whole 30’ x 50’ patch for us and our pumpkin dreams.

Despite the disorder, we ended up with a ton more squash than we’ve had in past years, and a huge jumble of vines of questionable origin. Somehow our New England Sugar Pie pumpkins managed to grow vines about 20 feet long extending in every direction, and setting fruit in literally every corner of the patch. After two big, promising, just-turning-orange pumpkins were completely demolished by our friendly neighborhood deer, we put up a hasty fence and secured a harvest of about 8 nice-sized pumpkins, with more still ripening on the vines. Now the only challenge that remains is figuring out what to do with it all.

So far, I’ve made some apple-wood smoked pumpkin that we used in a risotto, Katie’s done that beautiful vegetable curry, and I made some pumpkin butter to go in these danishes. I’m a huge fan of raspberry cream cheese danishes, so that’s the route I chose to go with for the pumpkin ones. I make the pumpkin butter a little lemony to get some tartness to go with the cream cheese, and I think they came out really well. The dough recipe I used makes about twice as much dough as I needed for the first batch, so more pastries are definitely in order.

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Pumpkin Butter and Cream Cheese Danishes

Pastry dough recipe adapted from Food.com. Makes 16 danishes.

For the pumpkin butter filling:

• 4 c. pumpkin puree
• ¾ c. water
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• ¼ tsp powdered ginger
• 1 Tbsp honey
• ¾ c. brown sugar

For the Cream Cheese Filling:

• 8 oz. package of cream cheese
• ½ c. Greek yogurt
• ¼ tsp vanilla
• ¼ c. sugar

For the Danish Pastry Dough:

• 2 c. milk
• 1 ½ tsp dry yeast
• 2 large eggs
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 7 c. all-purpose flour
• ⅓ c. granulated sugar
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• 1 lb unsalted butter
• ½ tsp cardamom

For the pumpkin butter:

1. If you are using whole pumpkins to begin with, follow these instructions to make your puree. If you are using canned pumpkin, skip to step two.
   1. Preheat oven to 300°F.
   2. Cut the pumpkin in half, and scoop out the seeds and fibers, discarding or reserving for another use.
   3. Place  pumpkins, cut side down, in a pyrex baking dish and fill the dish with ½ inch of water.
   4. Steam pumpkin in oven for about 45 minutes, until flesh is fork-tender all the way to the skin. Remove the pumpkins from the oven and let cool.
   5. Once the pumpkins are cool enough to handle, scoop out the flesh and blend until smooth
2. Combine all pumpkin butter ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium heat. Cook, stirring constantly, until the ingredients are evenly blended and the mixture holds it’s shape.

For the cream cheese filling:

1. Whip together all ingredients until the mixture is smooth and completely combined.

For the Danish dough:

1. Warm milk to 110°F (in a small saucepan over low heat or in the microwave), then sprinkle yeast over the top of the warm milk without mixing. Allow to sit for five minutes, then beat in eggs and vanilla. Whisk until ingredients are thoroughly combined.
2. Mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl until just combined. Cut in 3 Tbsp of butter, cut into small cubes, and use a pastry cutter to loosely combine.
3. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and knead until combined. Refrigerate dough for 1 hour. Leave remaining butter to soften while dough chills. The butter should be stiff, but spreadable.
4. On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a 2’ x 1’ rectangle. Spread remaining butter over the bottom two thirds of the dough. Fold the top third of the dough down into the middle, then fold the bottom third up onto the top, and roll into a 2’ x 1’ rectangle again. Repeat the folds, and refrigerate for another hour.
5. Repeat the folding and rolling process two more times to create layers of butter in the dough. This is what makes the final product light and flaky.

To assemble and bake:

1. Preheat oven to 450°F.
2. Roll out chilled dough to approximately ¼ inch thickness. Cut into 6”x8” squares.
3. Orienting rectangles such that the long edge is horizontal, make seven 1 ½ inch slits on either side.
4. Spread a line of cream cheese filling and a line of pumpkin butter vertically down the center of the rectangle, keeping approximately ½ inch away from the inner end of the slits on either side.
5. Fold the top and bottom slits on either side vertically down, to create a cup shape at either end.
6. Fold the remainder of the strips over the filling diagonally, starting from the top and alternating sides to create a crosshatch pattern. Pat down the ends of the strips as you go.
7. Place danishes on a parchment-paper lined baking sheet and bake for 8 to 10 minutes, until the pastry is golden all over.

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In an ideal world, I would have time to bake 10 different kinds of Christmas cookies, and then come Christmas day lay out a beautiful plate of differently shaped and colored and flavored treats.  (Yes, this is actually something I fantasize about.  I also fantasize about normal things like inheriting a villa in Italy and spending all day in a king-sized hotel bed with 15 pillows, but occasionally I fantasize about having perfect displays of baked goods.  C’est juste moi.)  In the real world, I have time to bake exactly 0 kinds of Christmas cookies, meaning that I will probably end up making 2 to 3 different kinds at odd hours of the morning when I should be studying for my steel final or writing the research term paper that I’ve been procrastinating literally since September.  Oops.

I can’t decide how much of a problem my tendency to use baking as a form of procrastination is.  I don’t really think it’s normal – most people are content with facebook and reruns of Modern Family – but at least it’s semi productive.  Or at least that is how I would like to justify it to myself.  For example, the night before fall break while working on yet another impossible matrix structural analysis problem set (yeah, I’m trying to impress you with the names of my classes), I decided at midnight to make 2 different kinds of apple muffins to bring with me to Tim’s house the next morning.  A nice, really poorly timed idea.  Then, the night before my steel midterm, which I began studying for at 9pm, I made an executive decision at 11pm that making banana bread would take approximately 5 minutes and be a great study break.  If you are ever thinking of making the same executive decision here are a few notes.  Note 1: making banana bread takes more than 5 minutes.  Note 2: once you make the banana bread you might find that it’s 11:45 and you feel kind of like taking a shower.  Note 3: after your shower it will be 12:15 and you will need time to eat 4 slices of banana bread.  Note 4: after eating too many slices of banana bread you will fall asleep, fat and happy and totally unprepared for your steel midterm.  Note 5: you will now need to do exceptionally well on your steel final and abstain from absolutely all baking for the 24 hours beforehand.  Period.

Occasionally, however, I behave like a responsible human being and set aside an hour or two of weekend time to bake.  For example, this morning.  When I made these shortbread cookies because shortbread is this month’s challenge over at Have the Cake.  I actually got really excited when I saw this challenge, especially since I haven’t been able to participate for a few months and I knew something as simple but changeable as shortbread would get me in the kitchen stat.  There were several shortbread recipes I wanted to try, and I might still try the savory parmesan-rosemary recipe I found, but in the end I decided to go with these lime and white chocolate shortbreads because they seemed festive enough to fit the bill of my first holiday cookie.

I think I would give these cookies a 3.5 out of 5 – there’s room for improvement.  I liked the flavors of the cookie and topping, but the texture of the lime zest in the cookie threw me off.  It made the cookies a bit crunchier than I thought they should be.  These cookies are also fairly crumbly, but since this is my first time making shortbread, I’m not sure how much of that is because of my technique and how much because of the recipe.  I would like to try these again omitting the lime zest from the cookie and using concentrated lime oil or lime extract instead of the almond extract, as I think that would give the cookies more flavor and a better texture.  I would keep the topping the same, as it was quite yummy and went well with the buttery cookie.

Lime Shortbread Cookies with White Chocolate and Almonds

Adapted from Bon Appetit.  Makes 24 cookies.

• 2 c. flour
• 1/2 c. powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 sticks chilled, unsalted butter
• 3 TBS lime zest, divided
• 1 tsp. almond extract
• 4 oz. white chocolate
• juice from 1 lime
• 1/3 c. sliced, blanched almonds, toasted until golden then chopped

1. Preheat oven to 325°F.  Butter a 13×9 metal baking pan.
2. In a large bowl, mix together flour, powdered sugar, and salt.  Mix in 2 TBS of lime zest and almond extract.  Cut cold butter into flour in small pieces, then use pastry cutter or hands to blend until even and can be pressed together into a loose ball.
3. Press dough evenly into prepared pan.  Use a fork to poke holes all over dough.  With a sharp knife, cut evenly sized triangles into dough, cutting all the way through dough.  Bake cookies for 35-45 minutes, or until golden brown and firm.  Upon removal from the oven, immediately use knife to recut through earlier markings.  Let cookies cool in pan on rack.  When cool, carefully remove from pan.
4. Bring a medium pot of water to a gentle simmer.  In a smaller pot, place white chocolate, remaining 1 TBS of lime zest, and lime juice.  Melt chocolate over simmering water, stirring all the while.  When thin enough, use a fork to drizzle lime-chocolate mixture over cookies, then top cookies with toasted almonds.

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