Color of this season is green

Golden squash, bright red tomatoes and peppers, white and purple eggplants, tawny carrots and creamy parsnips. Food writer Barbara Kafka is on record as loving vegetables in more colors than you could ever remember noticing.

Right now her focus is on green. The freshest of the fresh.

It’s the time of year, she says. Spring-into-summer brings baby lettuce, pea tendrils and other tender garden gifts that are perennial delights for cooks.

On the subject of sweet green English peas (some recipes specify them, not sugar-snap or snow peas, she points out), she recalls forebears of great good taste – “Thomas Jefferson grew more than 30 different kinds,” she exclaims. It was his favorite vegetable, and he and his neighbors competed in seeing who could grow the season’s first.

Such stories of peas and a zillion other vegetables, green and otherwise, twine as appetizingly as pea vines around some 750 recipes, plus endless variations, in Kafka’s most recent book, “Vegetable Love” (Artisan, $35).

This passionately focused book won the 2006 International Association of Culinary Professionals’ best single-subject cookbook award.

The term “single subject” here barely covers Kafka’s worldwide survey of an abundance of irrepressibly varied produce. The book’s recipes are backed by a cook’s guide section, a dictionary of vegetables taking readers in helpful detail alphabetically from amaranth to watercress.

Gardening and cooking, says Kafka, who is 72, have been lifelong interests. A dismaying start came very early on when she was put in charge of the family’s World War II Victory Garden. She couldn’t understand why things took so long to come up, she says. “I hated it.” But later she learned to love gardening from watching the English gardener at her childhood home in Westport, Conn.

She turned to cooking when she went off to college, having realized it was a great way to make friends. “I always liked looking after people,” she says. Then, faced with the need to decide on a subject for magazine feature writing, she declared herself a food writer – and never looked back. Her books include the acclaimed “Microwave Gourmet” and “Roasting.”

In Kafka’s uptown kitchen, where she’s cooking for a couple of visitors, counters and sinks seem to have turned into a verdant farmers’ market or garden. They’re sprouting leafy bundles of sorrel and spinach, overflowing with asparagus spears, punctuated with glass jugs of vivid green peas.

These are bought from local markets accessible from her Manhattan home, she explains. But Kafka spends a lot of time in her Vermont home, and she’s a devoted grow-your-own-stuff gardener. This colors her comments on what she’s cooking, the vegetables and herbs she uses and their preparation.

“Anyone who’s ever taken asparagus out of their own garden beds and crunched a bit of it on the way back to the kitchen knows it’s the sweetest and freshest and crispest,” she says, picking one of her favorite vegetables.

The easy dishes she’s chosen to cook today are Pasta with Asparagus Sauce and Sautéed Spinach and Sorrel. A small, delicately built woman, she has a kitchen scaled to suit her. “People are often doing things at the wrong height. These low counters are easier for me; this way I can see into the pots.”

She focuses on her ingredients. “This sorrel is true French sorrel, with long leaves; the round shield shape is more common. The sorrel sauté I’m making with it is acidic, fine for the way the food tastes but not for your pots. It makes aluminum go this ghastly shade of black.”

Note: Use nonreactive saucepans with sorrel.

Sorrel, finely shredded, goes well with baby carrots, onions and beets, “all of which are rich in sugar to balance the acidity of the sorrel,” she writes in her book. “It’s also good mixed into spinach purees and sauces.”

On the asparagus for the pasta: “For this dish I prefer asparagus that’s somewhat thicker. This way it will show up better and we want meaty stems. Since you’re going to be using them for a puree to make the sauce, you want as much energy as possible. Thin asparagus is better for frittata, say.

“I’ve snapped off the ends of the spears – they break off automatically where they are supposed to come off. Then peel what is left, from the flower down, right up to the tip: It’s really worth it.

“I’m going to say something that will annoy a lot of people, but the best way to cook asparagus is in the microwave. It uses very little water, it cooks quickly, keeps a bright color, all its vitamins and flavor – but that’s not fashionable of me.”

The spinach she’s using today is the young, flat spinach, usually called baby spinach. “I wanted the old crinkled kind and couldn’t find it anywhere,” Kafka says, noting its disappearance from markets. She prefers the crinkled kind for flavor.

The book is generously seasoned with such detail, a tasty exchange of knowledge ranging from practical cooking techniques to the natural behavior of exotic produce. In this context even a novice should feel encouraged to try a recipe.

Pasta with Asparagus Sauce

Kafka uses bought Italian egg noodles for this dish. The recipe emphasizes the elegance of asparagus with a minimum of ingredients, she points out.

1 pound asparagus, trimmed and peeled, stem ends and peelings reserved

1 (8.8-ounce) package dried Italian egg noodles

2 teaspoons kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon olive oil

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese (optional)

Separate the asparagus tips from the stems. Cut the stems into 1 1/2 -inch pieces. Reserve the stems and tips individually.

Bring about 1-quart water to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the asparagus stems. Cook for 7 to 8 minutes, until a knife easily slips into the flesh. Remove with a slotted spoon and reserve. Add the asparagus tips to the water. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes, just until tender. With the slotted spoon, remove to a strainer or colander; rinse under cold running water. Drain; reserve.

Add the trimmings to the water. Cook for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the broth is reduced to 1 cup and tastes strongly of asparagus. Strain the broth, pressing down on the solids to extract as much flavor as possible. Discard the solids.

Put the reserved stems through a food mill fitted with the medium disc to remove the fibers; there will be a generous 1/2 cup liquid. Strain through a fine sieve to remove any remaining fibers. Reserve.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the noodles and cook for 2 minutes, or until softened but still quite firm. Drain.

Combine the asparagus broth and liquid in the pot. Bring to a boil. Stir in the pasta. Cook over low heat, stirring continuously, until the liquid is mostly absorbed. Stir in the salt, pepper, oil and asparagus tips. Cook for a few minutes longer, until the liquid is fully absorbed. Serve immediately, topped with Parmesan, if desired.

Yield: 5 cups, 4 first-course servings.

Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.

Sautéed Spinach and Sorrel

“This sorrel looks like a fiercesome amount, but you have to remember that all these greens just disappear on you when you cook them,” Kafka says as she prepares her sauté of spinach and sorrel. After washing the spinach, shake off excess water but don’t blot it dry. The water left clinging to the spinach will evaporate over heat and cook the spinach without the addition of oil, she explains.

1 shallot, finely chopped (about 3 tablespoons)

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 bunch fresh parsley, leaves only, chopped (a generous 1/2 cup)

2 pounds sorrel, stemmed and cut across into 1/4 -inch strips (about 10 cups packed)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

2 pounds curly spinach, stemmed and cut into 1/4 -inch strips (about 12 1/2 cups packed)

In a large, nonreactive pan, cook the shallots in the oil over medium-low heat until translucent. Add the parsley and sorrel. Increase the heat to medium-high. Cook until the sorrel has just wilted and changed color, 5 to 6 minutes. Add 1/2 teaspoon salt. Reserve.

Put a large saucepan over medium heat and add the spinach in 3 batches, continuously turning it up from the bottom and allowing each batch to wilt before adding the next. Remove from the heat as soon as all the leaves have wilted and turned to a bright green. Drain in a sieve, pushing down on the spinach until mostly dry.

Add the spinach to the sorrel mixture. Add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, and heat through.

Yield: 3 1/2 cups

Approximate nutrition per serving: Unable to calculate.