Today the farmer’s market was resplendent. Full of sun, full of people, full of pansies and geraniums and flats of spearmint and basil. True, the excellent Borough Hall greenmarket is open year round, but today when we broke into the ‘70s, for the first time since, um, January (yes we had a strange winter), it truly felt like the first day of the farmers market season. Still, it’s very early, and most of the spring veggies hadn’t arrived. I got some beautiful spinach and kale, some fat leeks and some plump crimini mushrooms, but I couldn’t find a spear of asparagus anywhere. There were even quite a few remnants of fall and winter: parsnips and kohlrabi, and crates of cameo and ida red apples, still enticing after a long winter in the cellar. At each booth I asked for ramps, but nobody had any. The farmer from Wiklow said he thinks he found a stand of them, but they’re still too small to dig up and anyway he wasn’t entirely certain that’s what they were.

But even if spring hasn’t fully arrived at the greenmarket, it was much in the air and seducing my tastebuds. For the past year I’ve had in my head a recipe for artichoke ravioli primavera, and the blue sky and warm sun and bursting tulip trees made me think it was time to try such a variation of the springtime classic. Pasta Primavera is a classic, right? Isn’t it right up there with spaghetti and meatballs and chicken parmesan in the Italian American hall of food fame? Then why doesn’t Lydia nor Marcella, nor even the Joy of Cooking, nor even the Better Homes and Gardens Italian Cookbook, make even the merest mention of this dish? Did I make it up? I imagined it to be fresh green peas, asparagus tips, carrots for color, all in an alfredo sauce. Alfredo sauce – that’s a classic too, right? Right? Again, nothing from my trusty Italian advisors. The closest I came was a recipe called “Alfredo’s Noodles” in Fannie Farmer. I was a bit more successful on the internet, where I found some pasta primavera recipes, along with this link to a site (sporting a circa 1996 classic frames-based page design) that traces the histories of classic American dishes. Buy why are alfredo and primavera so shunned? Clearly a conspiracy is at work.

But this dish was tenaciously stuck in my mind, so I had to forge ahead. In my version I wanted homemade ravioli filled with ricotta and artichoke surrounded by a mixture of fresh, seasonal veggies in a rich-but-not-too-rich white cream sauce. I’d envisioned vibrant colors and a full, sun-rich, farmstand flavor. Since the local asparagus isn’t ready yet I made do with the California imports from Jim and Andy’s produce stand on Court Street. Reliably, Pacific Green had peas in the pod. And I had some beautiful bright orange carrots and some fresh organic mushrooms from the farm stand. I cleaned & prepped, then blanched my veggies: blanching was all they’d need, leaving them with bright color and just a little crunch. But then something went wrong. Some breath of winter was still hanging on, and the dish I ended up with couldn’t quite leave behind those traces of winter heartiness, with its subdued colors and darker flavors. That must be why I couldn’t help myself from sautéing everything together with the mushrooms, which transformed my bright veggies into a somber, wintery-grey-brown medley. Spring may be in the air, but it hasn’t arrived yet on my plate.

As for the insides of my ravioli: there could and can and will ever only be one ricotta cheese, and that’s the fresh ricotta from Caputo’s deli on Court Street. Once you’ve had it you’ll never be able to go back to supermarket ricotta except in direst necessity and with a tear in your eye. And of course once I was in the door at Caputo’s I had to sample some of their other excellent offerings, such as their grilled artichokes which lived up to the names “fresh” and “home made” and had none of the vinegary bitterness I’m used to from other neighborhood delis?

Everything I’ve ever bought from Caputo’s has been of the highest, most excellent quality, so I had to try one of their fine cheeses as well. I was hooked by it’s little placard mentioning the 12th century, so I chose the Pont D’Eveque. When I opened it up my head swam a little, and I thought, this is a truely stinky cheese. My Murry’s cheese guide, however, describes it as only “moderately pungent” (although it does add “beefy”). Truly I have a long road to travel toward the cheese of true stinkiness. I did fully enjoy my moderately pungent Pont D’Eveque though, paired with a California Viognier called “Renwood.”

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