An Early Spring Dinner Menu

Every few weeks, I offer you a menu for a soup-to-nuts meal, assembled from recipes on this site.

Here’s a menu with which to spring into Spring. The dessert dish even has the word “Spring” in it! The menu is bookended by recipes from my mother, Madeleine M. St. John, for whose recipes many of you regularly ask. She ran the Denver cooking school, La Bonne Cuisine.

Soup to Start: My mom’s Cream of Mushroom Soup was legendary. (It still is; someone recently sent me an email raving about it.) Mushroom foraging season in Colorado begins in April (even though it’s a bit too early to look in the mountains), but perhaps you’ve got some dried ‘shrooms that you picked last year. Go for it.

Shrimp and Grits would make a nice centerpiece to a Spring dinner (unless you’re set on Spring lamb). It’s got color and lots of vibrant flavors, plus each plate looks like a centerpiece all its own.

Vegetable: Little else in the green department says “Spring” more than asparagus. This post on cooking Asparagus Five Ways delivers on its title. Or, for a simple, straightforward, super-delicious way with asparagus, little beats Edna Lewis’s Skillet Asparagus.

Dessert: Many bemoaned the 2020 closing of The Market in Denver’s Larimer Square. But have your hand—and baking tools—at a recipe for its super-popular “Spring Fling Cake.”

For a simpler end to the springtime dinner, here’s a recipe for my mom’s Pot au Chocolat. Pure decadence and as easy to make as un, deux, trois.