The vernal equinox occurs this week (sorry Southern Hemisphere!) and so does St. Patrick's day, so what better excuse to go green?

No, we're not serving up beer with green food colouring.

Recipes:

(Shaun Smith) Roast Rack of Pork with Salsa Verde
(Cool Cuisine) Green Tea Stir-Fry with Seasonal Vegetables and Chicken or Baked Tofu
Fresh Barbecued Spot Prawns with Wild Rice Casserole and Braised Fennel
(Piano) Gnocchi di Ricotta con Piselli e Menta (Ricotta Gnocchi with Spring Peas and Mint)

Instead, now that spring's bounty is just around the corner, we talked with eco-friendly cookbook authors Laura Stec, John Bishop and Susan McKenna Grant about how to make your dining habits more green. We also asked them for some delicious recipes — all of which have some green ingredients as a tip o' the hat to St Paddy's Day.

My own recipe this month is for roast pork rack with salsa verde. I use naturally raised Lancashire Duroc pork sold through a local co-operative butcher shop that supports small, eco-friendly regional farmers. Such butchers are becoming more common these days, and while their prices may be slightly higher, the quality of their meat — raised without growth hormones, antibiotics, or pesticides — is far superior.

The animals, too, lead happier lives on such farms, allowed to range free instead of being penned up. Salsa verde (green sauce) is an age-old condiment handed down from Roman times. It's an intensely flavourful and salty sauce with a lustrous dark-green tone that goes well with roasted and grilled meats. I use green onions in mine to boost the colour. Be sure to use locally grown parsley, garlic and onions for your salsa verde, or better yet, plant some yourself this spring and use homegrown!

Roast Rack of Pork with Salsa Verda

-Shaun Smith

Shaun Smith is a writer, journalist and former chef in Toronto. He is the author of the young adult novel Snakes & Ladders.Shaun Smith is a writer, journalist and former chef in Toronto. He is the author of the young adult novel Snakes & Ladders. Use a rack of pork that allows for one chop (ie: one bone) per dinner guest. Make sure the rack has a nice layer of fat on it — otherwise your meat will end up dry. The fat will cook to a delicious crackling.

Preheat oven to 400 F

Searing the rack

Place a heavy roasting pan — large enough to hold your pork rack lengthwise — on the stovetop over a medium-high heat and add a teaspoon each of butter and vegetable oil. When the butter starts to foam, stand the rack in the pot on each end for about one minute, or until the meat has a beautifully browned surface. If the pan smokes, turn the heat down, and while searing use care, as the fat and oil can sputter. Use tongs to hold the rack and oven mitts to protect your hands. Season each end with a sprinkling of salt and pepper after searing, then lay the rack fat down in the pan and sear as much of the fat as you can in sections by rolling the rack with tongs. Season the underside of the rack then turn it over in the pan, bones down, and season the top. Place the pot with the pork rack uncovered in a 400 F oven. After 15 minutes reduce heat to 325 F and cook, basting occasionally, until internal temperature at the centre of the roast reaches 165 F. (About 1 1/2 hours for a 1.5 kg rack.)

When the roast is done, remove from pot and set it on a cutting board for ten minutes covered loosely with foil to keep warm. This allows the meat to "relax" so that juices return to the outer areas from its center. When ready to serve, cut the roast into chops between the bones. Plate with a generous tablespoon of salsa verde beside each chop.

Salsa Verde

Ingredients:

  • 2 tablespoons capers, drained
  • 2 anchovy fillets
  • 1 large handful of flat parsley leaves (about 2 loose cups)
  • 1/3 cup high quality extra virgin olive oil
  • ½ teaspoon chopped garlic (one small clove)
  • 6 green onions
  • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
  • 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar

(makes ½ cup, or enough for 6-8 chops)

Cut the green onions off where the white bulbs end and the green stalks begin. Reserve white bulbs for another use. Wash and dry green onion stalks and parsley well. Place all ingredients in the bowl of a food processor and puree till smooth, stopping to scrape down sides of bowl as you go. Parsley should be reduced to tiny flecks. Serve as a condiment with roasted or grilled meats and fish.

Cool Cuisine

- by Laura Stec & Dr. Eugene Cordero (Gibbs Smith)

Laura Stec is a chef, health educator and environmental advocate.Laura Stec is a chef, health educator and environmental advocate. "Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good," says Laura Stec, quoting the French philosopher Voltaire. To her, that maxim — which means people should not avoid doing good things just because they can't repair all that is wrong with the world — reflects perfectly how people should approach environmentalism.

"With the environment," she says by phone from California, "the stakes are often so high that it becomes difficult for the average person to feel they can achieve anything."

To give people some of the tools they need to begin to take action, Stec — who was trained at the Culinary Institute of America and works as a chef, health educator and environmental advocate near San Francisco — teamed up with Dr. Eugene Cordero, an associate professor of meteorology at San Jose State University to create the Global Warming Diet, which outlines how people can adopt eco-friendly habits in their kitchen.

Their cookbook based on the diet, Cool Cuisine: Taking a Bite Out of Global Warming, contains a wealth of information about how everything from your drive to the grocery store to the industrialization of the beef industry affects the Earth's ecology. It also provides simple, practical advice on how to limit your carbon footprint in the kitchen by doing such things as reducing or eliminating consumption of foods that rely heavily for production on fossil fuels and chemical fertilizers, buying locally produced ingredients from environmentally conscious producers and suppliers, and reducing and composting food waste.

Dr. Eugene Cordero is an associate professor of meteorology at San Jose State University.Dr. Eugene Cordero is an associate professor of meteorology at San Jose State University. Stec argues that industrialization has driven a wedge between the consumer and producer, and her goal is to help people re-established a more enjoyable, balanced relationship with food. Understanding where your food comes from is key.

"We place so much importance on people like those who cut our hair or detail our cars, but we don't seem to care who grows our food," she says.

To foster a sense of community, she encourages people to shop at farmers' markets and patronize stores that support local eco-friendly producers. "We've lost our relationship with food and we need to gain it back," she says, "because what people really hunger for is connection. Without that, all the food in the world is not going to satisfy us."

Cool Cuisine is also packed with cooking advice and recipes. The Green Tea Stir Fry below is great because while Stec uses carrots, celery, broccoli, snowpeas, she says you can take advantage of whatever local vegetables are in season.

Green Tea Stir-Fry with Seasonal Vegetables and Chicken or Baked Tofu

– Laura Stec

Ingredients:

(Gibbs Smith)(Gibbs Smith) Choose one of the ingredients below or reduce each amount by half and use a combination:

  • 1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, chopped into 1-inch pieces
  • 1 (8-ounce) package baked or fresh tofu, cubed

Marinade for chicken or tofu:

  • 2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
  • 2 teaspoons freshly grated gingerroot
  • 1 clove garlic
  • 1 teaspoon arrowroot (can substitute cornstarch)

Stir-fry sauce:

  • 1 cup brewed green tea or vegetable stock
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon brown rice vinegar
  • 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon or lime juice
  • 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
  • 1 teaspoon Sriracha (hot pepper sauce)
  • 2 tablespoons arrowroot (can substitute cornstarch)
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
  • 2 teaspoons freshly grated ginger root
  • 1 clove garlic, chopped
  • Mixed vegetables, cut on a thin, long diagonal into bite-size pieces (carrots, celery, broccoli, snowpeas; about 2 cups)
  • 1/4 cup ice-cold water as needed
  • Garnish: sliced green onions, slivered nori sea vegetable

(Serves 4)

Chicken and tofu work well together; combining them helps reduce meat consumption. Use a wok for best results. Cutting vegetables into long, diagonal pieces exposes as much of the surface area of the vegetable as possible directly to the wok and assists in caramelization.

For the marinade, combine marinade ingredients, add chicken and/or tofu and marinate at least 15 minutes and up to 6 hours in the refrigerator.

For the stir-fry sauce, combine all ingredients and set aside.

Heat wok or sauté pan on medium-high heat. Add 1 tablespoon oil, ginger, and garlic; stir-fry 30 seconds. Add chicken and/or tofu, stir-fry until cooked through, about 5 minutes. Remove from pan. Add the last tablespoon of oil and sliced vegetables and stir-fry about 5 minutes. While cooking, add 1 tablespoon cold water as needed to "force-steam" vegetables. When vegetables are crisp tender, add the chicken or tofu. Mix stir-fry sauce, making sure arrowroot is well incorporated. Add sauce to wok. Cook until thickened. Serve over cooked grains. Garnish with green onions and nori.

(Recipe and photos reprinted with permission from Gibbs Smith publishers.)

Fresh: Seasonal Recipes Made with Local Foods

- by John Bishop, Dennis Green & Dawne Gourley (Douglas & McIntyre)

In 1985, John Bishop opened Bishop's in Vancouver.In 1985, John Bishop opened Bishop's in Vancouver. Restaurateur John Bishop remembers when the idea of using seasonal and local ingredients could put you out of business. "When I first came to Vancouver in 1973," he says, "restaurant menus never changed. You couldn't use seasonal ingredients because if you changed your menu, you'd lose half your clientele. There'd be outrage. Menus offered nothing local. Fish came from Europe, lamb was from New Zealand, even oysters came from the East Coast or Europe." Today Bishop uses local organic farmers and fishers for virtually all of the produce, meat and seafood served at his Vancouver restaurant Bishop's, which he opened in 1985.

He has a particularly strong relationship with his vegetable supplier, Hazelmere Organic Farm, run by Gary and Naty King in South Surrey, B.C. "When I met the Kings about 18 years ago it transformed the way we did a lot of our sourcing," Bishop says by phone from Vancouver. "We used to have one wholesaler with a big black truck who'd bring everything from toilet tissues to tomatoes, but now we have about 20 suppliers, each bringing a different thing. We know all the farmers and growers who produce our food."

Bishop's cookbook Fresh: Seasonal Recipes Made with Local Foods, which was co-authored with his chefs Dennis Green & Dawne Gourley, celebrates the restaurant's friendship with Hazelmere and is a primer for home chefs on how to follow the seasons and enjoy local eco-friendly ingredients — crucial steps in battling the food industry's dependency on chemical pesticides as well as fossil fuels for green houses and long-distance transport.

While the book's focus is on the Pacific Northwest, Bishop encourages readers from other regions to adapt the recipes and experiment with ingredients from their own area. Visiting farms and farmers' markets whenever possible is crucial, he believes. "If we don't know how much effort went into that simple bunch of parsley, it is that much easier to waste it," he says.

The recipe below marries the farm and sea, using fennel and spot prawns. "The local spot prawn is a thing of joy," Bishop says. "We have a spot prawn festival here that runs through May and June, which is the length of the season. It's a sustainable fishery. We work with a local fisher who comes into the dock at Granville Island every evening with his catch. What we are trying to rally against is the use of imported, farmed prawns."

Barbecued Spot Prawns with Wild Rice Casserole and Braised Fennel

- John Bishop

(Douglas & McIntyre)(Douglas & McIntyre)

Barbecued Spot Prawns ingredients:

  • 24 spot prawns (about 1 1/4 lbs), peeled and deveined, tail on
  • 8 wooden skewers, soaked in cold water for 2 to 3 hours
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 cloves fresh garlic, crushed
  • 2 Tbsp finely chopped mixed fresh herbs (such as basil, thyme, tarragon)
  • 4 lemon wedges, for garnish

Wild Rice Casserole:

  • 3 Tbsp butter
  • 1 cup finely chopped onions
  • 1 cup finely chopped celery
  • 1 cup wild rice, washed
  • 3 cups fish or vegetable stock
  • 1 tsp lemon zest
  • 1 tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • ¼ cup finely chopped parsley
  • ½ cup fresh or frozen peas

Braised Fennel Bulb:

  • 1 lb fresh fennel bulb (1 large or 2 medium), cut in quarters, lengthwise
  • 2 Tbsp melted butter
  • 2 Tbsp chopped fennel fronds
  • 1 tsp salt

(Serves 4)

Spot prawns have a very short season, only about two months, so most of them are frozen at sea immediately after being caught. They are one of the few seafoods that do not suffer from being frozen and, to quote a fishmonger friend of mine, they are very often fresher tasting than fresh prawns that are stored on ice.

In this recipe the seasoning is very basic — just fresh garlic and herbs — because we do not want to mask the sweet flavour of the prawns. Using two skewers for each brochette makes them easier to turn and prevents the prawns from slipping around. Wild rice has evolved naturally over thousands of years in northern lakes. It is still harvested by aboriginal peoples and is considered wild and organic. As for the fresh fennel, occasionally you will see brown staining on the outside of the bulb, which indicates that it may not be very fresh. Fennel is expensive, so don't be tempted to remove the leaves; simply remove the stained bits with a peeler. You can prepare the rice and the fennel at the same time.

WILD RICE CASSEROLE - Preheat the oven to 375 F. Melt butter in a frying pan on medium heat. Add onion and celery and sauté until tender, about 5 minutes. Add rice, then stir in fish (or vegetable) stock, lemon zest, salt and pepper. Increase the heat to medium-high, bring to a boil, then remove from the heat. Transfer the rice mixture to an ovenproof casserole with a lid. Bake covered for 35 minutes.

Remove the casserole from the oven and add parsley and peas. Cover, then return to the oven and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, or until rice is tender.John Bishop suggests consumers should visit farms and farmers' markets to buy products such as fennel.John Bishop suggests consumers should visit farms and farmers' markets to buy products such as fennel.

BRAISED FENNEL BULB - Preheat the oven to 375 F. Place fennel quarters into a medium bowl, then pour butter over them. Sprinkle with fennel fronds and season with salt. Toss lightly to coat well. Transfer the seasoned fennel to a shallow roasting pan and cook for about 45 minutes, turning the vegetables occasionally until caramelized and tender. Remove from the oven, set aside and keep warm.

BARBECUED SPOT PRAWNS - Preheat the barbecue to medium-high heat. Place 6 prawns side by side on a plate. Thread a single skewer through one end of each of these prawns to create a skewer with 6 prawns on it. Thread a second skewer through the other end of each of the 6 prawns. Repeat with the remaining skewers and prawns. Place the skewers on a baking sheet and brush both sides with olive oil. Rub the prawns with garlic and season with the herbs and a light shake of salt. Grill the prawns for 2 to 3 minutes per side, or until lightly charred and colour changes.

TO SERVE - Mound 1 1/2 cups of wild rice on each warmed plate. Top with a prawn skewer and arrange braised fennel around the edges. Garnish with a wedge of lemon.

From the book Fresh: Seasonal Recipes made with Local Foods, © 2007, by John Bishop, with Dennis Green and Dawne Gourley. Photography by John Sherlock. Published by Douglas & McIntyre (an imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.) Reprinted with permission of the publisher.

Piano, Piano, Pieno: Authentic Food from a Tuscan Farm

- by Susan McKenna Grant (HarperCollins Canada)

Susan McKenna Grant runs a fully functional organic farm in Tuscany.Susan McKenna Grant runs a fully functional organic farm in Tuscany. For Canadian chef Susan McKenna Grant, just visiting farms was not enough. She had to own one. Grant, who was raised in Southern Ontario and worked for years in the computer business, made a break with that career in the 1990s to travel Europe and study cooking. In 2001, she and her husband purchased an abandoned farm high in the Chianti Mountains of Tuscany, called La Petraia, a property which dated back to Etruscan times.

"I had really been concerned about food for a long time — since I was a teenager," Grant says by phone from Italy. "I was concerned about the increasing industrialization of our food chain. Real food was becoming so hard to find, I wanted to get closer to the source of food and simplify my life."

Grant and her husband slowly resurrected the 165 acre property and it is now a fully functional organic farm and agriturismo — farms that also offer accommodation to vacationers. At La Petraia they follow the tenants of Slow Food — a movement begun in Italy in 1986 aimed at preserving traditional gastronomy and agriculture — and they have used the farm to revive the cultivation of heirloom fruits and vegetables as well as rare animal breeds, such as the cinta senese pig and valdarnese chicken, that were once common to the region but had been nearly lost to industrialization. "We're almost self-sufficient here," Grant says. "With the exception of dairy, we pretty much grow everything that we eat."

For the recipe below, Grant gets her ricotta from a local cheesemaker, but everything else — from the flour used in the dough, to the fresh peas and mint, to the pancetta (bacon) — is produced at La Petraia.

(HarperCollins Canada)(HarperCollins Canada)

Gnocchi di Ricotta con Piselli e Menta (Ricotta Gnocchi with Spring Peas and Mint)

-Susan McKenna Grant

Gnocchi ingredients:

  • 225 g (8 oz) fresh ricotta cheese
  • 70 g (2.5 oz) (¾ cup) grated Parmesan cheese
  • ½ cup bread flour, plus more for rolling out the dough
  • 1 egg, lightly beaten
  • ¼ tsp salt

For the sauce:

  • 1 small onion, minced
  • ½ garlic clove, minced
  • 28 g (1 oz) pancetta, thinly sliced or finely diced
  • 1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
  • ½ cup fresh or frozen green peas

To finish Several leaves of fresh mint, rolled tightly one on top of the other into a cigarette shape and finely sliced into a chiffonade

(Serves 4 to 6)

Italians make gnocchi out of a thousand different things. Sometimes the mixture is simply flour bound with an egg; other times it is made with potatoes, polenta, chestnut flour or ricotta cheese. Squash, beets, or other vegetables are incorporated to add color and flavour. While few of my Italian friends can make fresh pasta, almost all of them can whip up a batch of gnocchi in no time flat. And for every gnocchi maker there is a different secret technique. I've also yet to meet an Italian child who does not adore gnocchi. Even the fussiest of eaters gobble them up. This is Italian soul food. It's made in a minute and it disappears that fast, too.

My favorite gnocchi are the delicate ones made with ricotta cheese. Use the best quality and freshest ricotta, preferably made from sheep's or buffalo's milk. These feather-light dumplings melt in your mouth and are best adorned with judicious restraint. A simple condiment of lightly scented seasonal vegetables is enough.

For the gnocchi Mix all of the gnocchi ingredients together. This can be done by hand or in a mixer using the paddle attachment. The dough will be a bit sticky. Refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour.

(Gnocchi)When you are ready to shape the gnocchi, you will need a bowl of cold water and two wet hands. Sprinkle your work surface with flour and divide the dough into 3 or 4 parts. Take one piece of the dough and, with wet hands, roll it into a slender log about ½ inch wide. Using a sharp knife dipped in the water, cut this log at bite-sized intervals-about ½ inch. Place on a piece of wax or parchment paper while you proceed to shape the rest of the dough. If you like, you can experiment with shaping the gnocchi by rolling them over the tines of a fork or, alternatively, rolling them into a ball using wet hands. The gnocchi can be kept for several hours in the fridge until you plan to cook. Better yet, freeze them on a tray lined with parchment or wax paper. The frozen gnocchi are not the least bit sticky and are much easier to transfer into boiling water.

Cook the gnocchi in a large pot of rapidly boiling salted water until they rise to the surface-just a couple of minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the hot water for the sauce.

For the sauce Make this quick and easy sauce by sautéing the onion, garlic, and pancetta in the olive oil until the onion wilts and the pancetta begins to crisp slightly. Add the peas along with some of the reserved water from the gnocchi, if needed to form a sauce consistency. The peas will take just a couple of minutes to cook. Serve garnished with the fresh mint.

Variations You can experiment with the sauce. I sometimes add a dash of cream at the end, and certainly many other vegetables will work in place of peas-zucchini, asparagus, fava beans, winter squash or red or yellow peppers, just to name a few. This is an easy and whimsical sauce, so follow your instincts and the season and you will not be disappointed. The mint marries well with spring and early-summer vegetables such as peas and fava beans. Zucchini and peppers love basil, and sage is wonderful with winter squash.

(Photos and recipe reprinted with permission from HarperCollins Canada.)