SpiceLines

One sweltering Saturday afternoon, Serendipity and I waited hours to taste the Antiga Confeitaria's famed custard tarts. Was it worth it? Read on.

The Marquesa lifted a forkful of sweet custard tart to her lips.

She let it slide slowly over her tongue, then swallowed delicately. Her eyelids lowered to half mast. “Pasteis de nata?” she said dreamily. “You can get them everywhere. But for the best, you have to go to Belem.”

The Portuguese definitely have a sweet tooth. In Lisbon it seems as if there’s a pastelaria or pastry shop on every block, sometimes two or three. All are full of sugary treats, but the custardy, egg yolk-based pastries created by nuns during the 17th century make the Portuguese heart beat a little faster. Some have delightfully celestial names such as papos de anjo (angel’s breasts) and toucinho do ceu (bacon from heaven)—the last also made in Spain where it’s known as tocino de cielo.

But of all the egg yolk pastries, Lisboans go completely weak at the knees for silver dollar-sized pasteis de nata (literally “cakes of cream”) that can be devoured in two or three bites. And of all the pasteis sold around the world, they are hands down most passionate about the ones from the Antiga Confeitaria de Belem.

Which is why Serendipity and I are now standing in a line with about 500 people on a hot Saturday afternoon, waiting to enter its hallowed doors.

Last Saturday I found heaps of green garlic at the market. These stalks were pulled from the earth after the cloves have developed, but before the skins that separate them have dried. Cooked, green garlic has a sweet, mellow flavor with just a whiff of the mature bulb.

There are a few signs that spring is well and truly here.

*At last Saturday’s farmer’s market, there were baskets and baskets of local strawberries, so fragrant and crushable that they conjured up a voluptuous sponge cake, oozing luscious red juices, piled high with vanilla-scented whipped cream.

*Slender pork tenderloins from Elysian Field Farm, so tender and juicy that they needed only a sprinkle of salt and pepper, and a rub with garlic and thyme, before a brief grilling over oak wood coals.

*And then there’s green garlic.

At the market there were heaps of green garlic—plump white bulbs with lanky leaves—laid out on checkered tablecloths. There was a faint whiff of garlic in the air, elusive but enticing. I inhaled and found myself scooping up a dozen stalks.

There's nothing like sponge cake for drinking up all the luscious juices of strawberries macerated with rose geranium leaves. Spoon clouds of whipped cream over it all. Can't you feel summer coming in?

“…the smell of newly picked wild strawberries is like special music; it gives me a concrete conception of paradise, infinity—perfection.” —Ingmar Bergman

A few years ago in Stockholm, on a summer day when it couldn’t decide whether to rain or shine, B and I spent a dreamy afternoon at Rosendal Tragard on the island of Djurgarden. Once upon a time, Djurgarden was the site of bucolic farms and dairies. King Karl Johan XIV built a summer pleasure palace there, but the real attraction for us was the biodynamic garden, probably the most idyllic on the planet.

Oh, the memories of that place are so seductive that I’m going to write about it soon—and show you the pictures that I took. In summer the perfume of blowsy roses hangs heavy in the garden and children clamber up the sturdy limbs of old apple trees.

But about the strawberries: In the Rosendal Garden Café cookbook, there’s a letter from Ingmar Bergman, the legendary Swedish film director, to Monika Ahlberg, the café’s beautiful baker, in which he confesses:

“I have been allergic to wild strawberries all my life..."

Saffron, the dried red stigma of the crocus sativus, is the world's most expensive spice. It takes up to 75,000 flowers--and hours of back-breaking labor-- to produce one pound of the spice.

Roughly 90 percent of the world’s saffron is grown in Iran, much of it in the impoverished province of South Khorasan near the Afghan border. In 2009 the Iran Chamber of Commerce boasted of $92 million in exports, mostly to Spain—itself a leading exporter of the spice—as well as the United Arab Emirates, India and Saudi Arabia.

But tiny pockets of saffron pop up in surprising places—like Italian armoires. In Growers Feel the Squeeze to Sell a Pinch of Saffron (The New York Times, May 13, 2010, p. A8) Elisabeth Rosenthal describes the struggle of 97 families in the hamlet of Civitaretenga near Navelli, where saffron has been grown since the 13th century, to cultivate the costly spice.

“It is grown in small plots of land and harvested before dawn each fall. But since saffron season is so brief, less than two months from planting to harvest, growing it is no one’s primary occupation,” writes Rosenthal. Sandra Cantalini, whose entire family helps with the harvest, says, “For 15 days you’re up before the sun rises and really hustling for two hours.”

Samarchand , shown on this 1575 map, was one of the greatest Central Asian cities on the Silk Road linking China with the Mediterranean. Through this ancient tradiing center passed caravans bearing spices, silks, and other longed for treasures of Asia.

Now it can be told…

The map—which vanished early in April—has reappeared.

Its tortured voyage through the backwaters of U.S. Customs, not to mention the "exes" (Fedex, Amex et al) is a saga of zealous agents, finger-pointing bureaucrats, and Interpol’s “stolen stuff” list. It ended not with the sound of trumpets, but with the unceremonious ringing of the doorbell.

“Do you want this ?” queried a bored Fedex guy when Serendipity opened the front door. He thrust a 22-inch mailing tube plastered with a big red “X-ray” sticker, one end unsealed, into her hands and bounded back into his truck.

Let’s call it serendipity.

I had no sooner opened the CSA box than a bunch of dark red Early Wonder Tall Top Beets popped out. The fridge in the garage was fragrant with green garlic and the Kentucky Colonel spearmint was shooting up in the garden. Always there are lemons in the bowl.

They came together in this unexpectedly delicious spring salad. As Monika Ahlberg said, “Sometimes it’s easy for thoughts to take wing.”

Enough talking. Here’s the recipe:

Do you always want what you can’t have? And does not being able to get it, whatever “it” is, make it that much more beguiling?

Saturday morning I got into the old but still classy champagne Mercedes, blasted the atmospheric soup with cold air, and purred down to the Pearl Farmer’s Market, Pearl convenes every Saturday in a stultifyingly hot parking lot near a bend in the San Antonio River where you can pretend to get cool by gazing at water lilies that look like enormous four leaf clovers.

The opening bell hadn’t rung yet, so I wandered around, chatting on the phone with assorted friends and relations. Meanwhile I was being driven mad with desire by the luscious, look-but-don’t touch-produce arranged enticingly on the tables. Was it my imagination or on a gloomy morning, did the fruits and vegetables glow like radiant gems in a dark, humid cave?

Were the peaches more intensely fragrant because I couldn’t scoop them right into my straw shopping bag? Was it more urgent to buy a dozen squash blossoms, gloriously painted in shades of flame orange, yellow and green, because I had to wait 20 minutes?

Creme de Violette, distilled from Austrian violets, is a old liqueur that's making a comeback. Its sweet, flowery taste blends beautifully with dry prosecco or champagne.

Here’s another scent-memory.

I’m sitting at my grandmother’s dressing table, gazing at reflections of my eight-year- old self in its three mirrors. Her silver jewelry box, lined with sandalwood, is open. A rose gold bangle set with a single diamond winks at me.

But my hand strays instead to a small creamy flacon painted with the most delicate purple petals. I lift the stopper and inhale. The sweet scent of violets washes over me. I feel woozy; my vision blurs. It’s the most beautiful fragrance of my young life.

“Parma violets,” smiles my grandmother who has slipped up behind me. She dabs a little perfume on my earlobes and then, so that I can breathe in the scent, touches the stopper to my upper lip. I’m in perfume heaven.

Do you know what was in the bottle?