needs more salt

We made the fanciest dinner of all time for Mother’s Day with JMM’s parents — planning and cooking this meal was so fun that I was almost sad to actually eat all the food. The menu:

- Spring pea and ricotta torte (again), this time poured into a pie shell
- Tartine sourdough with Frankie’s olive oil and the pink sea salt JMM’s mom brings us from Hawaii
- Zuni Cafe-style roasted chicken, modified with no flipping, lavender butter under the skin, and tiny potatoes baked under it in the pan
- Glazed carrots with wilted Bibb lettuce to which I added purple scallions and green garlic (this was possibly my favorite part of the meal!)
- Escarole salad with radishes and anchovy vinaigrette
- Our whole wheat-cornmeal variation on the Edna Lewis cake, served with a variation on this compote: toss a pound of sliced strawberries, 3 cups of chopped rhubarb, 6 tablespoons of brown sugar, big strips of peel from a lemon, and a big glug of rosewater in a pan, then roast at 300 degrees for 2 hours (it’ll set as it cools)