iStock

APRIL MAY SEEM like a strange time to be talking turkey. The all-American bird shows up at the holidays and seems to hide away the rest of year. At my place, though,  turkeys are still roasting, or at least turkey breast, all year-round. One of my tricks when I know there’s a crazy week ahead is to roast a turkey breast, in the oven or on the grill. For the next few days, I know we can make a dinner of turkey sandwiches—and of course turkey sandwiches are kind of the best part of the day after Thanksgiving anyway.

Yes, you can buy sliced turkey at the supermarket, and turkey sandwiches are so ubiquitous it would be hard to find a deli case without one, but few compare to a sandwich made from freshly roasted turkey. Consider:

• At home, you can cut thick slices of turkey for your sandwiches. You can heat the slices, place them on a bun bottom, spoon on sautéed mushrooms and finish by adding a slice of swiss cheese and running it under the broiler to melt. Finish with the bun top and you have a turkey melt worth coming home to eat.
• Or maybe you like an old-fashioned open-face turkey sandwich? They used to be so easy to find at the neighborhood diner, but those diners are mostly gone now. Whip up a quick gravy with some chicken broth, lay your heated slices of turkey on some grilled or toasted country bread and pour the gravy on. It’s even better than what the diner used to serve.
• Like your sandwiches cold? How about sliced turkey on whole-grain bread with sliced avocado and bacon?
• Looking to make a completely modern tea sandwich? Make mini corn muffins, slice them in half, top with a small piece of the turkey breast and a small spoonful of orange marmalade.
• Still have turkey on your hands? Turn the leftovers into an herbed turkey salad with a dressing made from yogurt, mayonnaise, a little mustard and chopped fresh herbs. Stuff this inside a pita and you’re set.

This is all thanks to the turkey breast you roasted on Sunday. You can roast in the oven—most breasts come with instructions—or roast in an aluminum-foil pan on the grill over indirect heat. However you roast the bird, you’ll know that for the hectic days to come, dinner’s only a few steps away.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” gives us permission to do what’s necessary in the crazed family kitchen.

Above and on the front, branches of Korean spice viburnum smell as great as they look, / Photos by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

DAMN RIGHT I stole these branches.

What is this tree, I mumbled to no one, although My Prince was right beside me. I knew he wouldn’t know.

I don’t know, he said. This is just what I said he’d say. Show him a flower, any flower,  and he’ll ask, Is this a rose? Useless. Unless I need a hole dug—he’s excellent for that.

The scent, I said, waggling a branch in his face. Smell this!

Nice, he said rather warily, as if I’d pointed his slender Irish proboscis into a cluster of bees, not innocent white blossoms. Why doesn’t he trust me?

Nice is an understatement if ever I’ve heard one. The flowers on this small tree, maybe seven feet tall and so prettily shaped, were as intoxicatingly sweet as anything I’d ever sniffed.

The house where the tree stands is empty. It will soon be on the market. My Prince was asked by the long-distance owners to remove this and that to make way for painters and stagers.

I was there for the purpose of scavenging (there were numerous pots and planters and such being discarded), and I considered nipping these branches to be part of the tidying.

Posting a close-up of a flower online, it was Baby who surprised me with the tree’s name. There’s an app for that, it appears. PictureThis Plant Identifier has you upload a photo to your phone, fidget a bit, and it is miraculously identified.

She said it’s a Korean Spice Viburnum which, on looking it up, appears to be a plant of some perfection for my dry (because I often neglect to water), shady (because it’s a jungle) back garden.

At seven feet, the tree I cadged the flowers from is fully grown. According to the commercial grower Monrovia, which supplies many local garden centers, there’s “so much to love about this old-fashioned shrub, from spicy-scented blooms in spring and berries and colorful foliage in fall. Once established, it thrives with little supplemental water . . . Plant [along a shady wall] near windows, patios and living areas to enjoy the fragrance.”

They call it a shrub, but it sure looks like a small tree since it branches several feet up from a solid main stem, though perhaps it was trained that way.

I must have one.

As for the purloined branches, it is rare, at this time of year, that I have to resort to stealing (or god forbid buying from a florist) flowering stems. It forever amazes me that walking down the street can offer such bounty—so many people clip and prune and discard budded branches of magnolia, dogwood and cherry when they can be stuffed into vases, taken inside and enjoyed sometimes weeks before they bloom outdoors.

It’s even more sinful when flower-laden branches lie in sad heaps along the sidewalks.  

I always allow a lower branch of my Kwanzan cherry to grow out, snipping it each spring when the buds grow fat and it’s a few weeks from full-flowering—like now. Place the stems in a warm room for a couple of days and they will burst open, giving a delightful preview of the coming pink-petaled storm.

As the flowers fade from whatever it is you pruned or scavenged, the sweet new leaves will probably emerge, giving you a little indoor tree. The yellow flowers on the long branches of forsythia I clipped weeks ago, and set as an explosion of color on the dining table, are just now turning green.

The Korean spice branches are in a broken pedestal, which gives just the right touch of ruin to the top of the living-room radiator, though it leaks like a sieve.

(Tip ahead! If you have a vessel with an opening that you think would be nice for flowers but doesn’t hold water, trim a plastic bottle to size and shove it in the hole. I’ve found that the particularly narrow 33.8-ounce bottles of Refreshe Electrolyte Water from Harris Teeter work beautifully.) The water tastes disgusting, but My Prince will drink (or eat) anything. His mother taught him not to waste.*

He’s such a handy person to have around.

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

*Remind me to tell you the story of the Safeway graham crackers he once bought, two for one as I recall. Feh.  

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” shares her horticultural aperçus with us every Thursday.

Party-ready mini-quiche above, family-dinner maxi-quiche on the front. / Photos by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.

PITY THE POOR quiche. Maligned as a ladies-who-lunch food. Bastardized in supermarket refrigerator cases. Miniaturized as frozen party fare. One look at the ingredient labels would leave anyone familiar with the original recipe at a loss. The original is a quick mix of cream, milk and eggs baked in a butter-rich crust. And in our back-to-real-food world, I am calling for a return to the original for all the right reasons.

Quiche is always a favorite. Many moons ago, when I was cooking the “family” meal (meaning the staff meal) at the restaurant where I was an intern, I made quiche. Line cooks came over and grabbed whole ones for themselves. The reception at parties is the same as the one I got at that lunch, especially if I make a bite-size version. In my house, quiche is a favorite emergency meal. (But don’t tell my family it was an emergency choice: They think I’m treating them.)

There’s a basic formula for quiche: ½ cup cream and/or milk to 1 egg. My standard for filling one quiche is 3 eggs, ¾ cup of whole milk and ¾ cup of heavy cream. I always season with nutmeg, salt and freshly ground pepper. From there I keep the add-ins simple. Diced ham, crumbled cooked bacon, browned mushrooms and caramelized onions are classic, but choose only one or two in each quiche. Treating the quiche like a destination for everything in the refrigerator is how the thing got ruined to begin with. Whichever add-ins I choose, I like to put 1 cup grated gruyère or Swiss cheese on top of them. Then I pour on my egg-cream-milk custard. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes in a 375- degree oven. Be careful to bake just until the custard is set and lightly browned. Over-baking can cause the custard to water out, and soggy quiche is a downer.

As for the crust, I make an all-butter crust, sometimes using an egg in place of the most of the water. It makes a firmer crust. Lately, I’ve been prebaking my crust for 15 to 20 minutes so I don’t have to worry about whether the custard is done before the crust is cooked through. Pie pans, tart pans and cake pans all work just fine. If you want to present the whole quiche, use a pan with a removable bottom so you can easily get the quiche out onto a serving platter.

My current obsession is making mini-quiches. The frozen kind are so bad that making your own is well worth it. Line mini tart or muffin pans with rounds of the all-butter pie crust. Add your fillings and just enough custard to cover. Bake on the lowest rack of your oven for 15 to 18 minutes and you have some pretty delicious party food.

Perhaps best of all, you can make quiche a day ahead of your event so you’ll be relaxed on the day of. Yes, quiche is always at its very best on the day it’s made, but it heats beautifully.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” shares dinner and entertaining ideas every Monday.

TIME WAS, a flotilla of ballerinas danced down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol—magnolias they were,  flamboyant and graceful and laden with the palest pink petals for a few days or weeks, depending on the weather.  

Crapapple trees now flourish where magnolias once ruled, on an avenue leading to the US Capitol. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

There are still plenty of gorgeous magnolias around the Capitol Hill neighborhood, and each is a splendid sight, with canopies of pink spreading over the brick sidewalks. But 25 years ago there was block after block of these beauties, maybe eight on each side of every median strip, stretching out 14 blocks or so from the Capitol.

And then, one day, when the trees were at their absolute peak, they went down.

Boom, boom, boom, they fell, and the screams of the neighbors were tragic to hear. People spilled into the streets grabbing at the men hacking as the neighborhood treasures dropped to the ground, petals crushed beneath work boots. It was a massacre.

I was working across the street from one long block of trees, gazing out the window and cringing, even though I had been warned that this was to happen. Running the local business association, I was privy to such news—and attempted to keep people informed, though they rarely listened, never mind read my dispatches, which is neither here nor there.

So most of the neighborhood was unaware that the trees were dying. With no watering system, the Metro, which runs under the median strip for many blocks, had so baked the earth that the trees were being frizzled from the roots (that’s a technical term).  

Skittering downstairs, I gathered armloads of branches, sticking them in whatever containers came to hand—pencil cups, trash cans, coffee pot. . . .  The office, and later my house, were filled with them, an extraordinary mortuary of flowers. Heavenly melancholy it was.

New trees were planned, I knew, a variety of crabapple that was extremely drought resistant, and while a flowering sort, it did not set fruit, which would have been a horror of another sort.

The business community was charged with the watering: No sprinklers were being installed. That was the deal. The city would plant if we tended. Oh yes, of course, we swore up and down, looking innocent as pie but without any idea how this would be accomplished. There was no Business Improvement District in those days, able to pick up the tab, just the contributions of shopkeepers. Watering cans was a thought.  

Somehow, the crabapples survived, and are now fully grown. Flowering each April, and again (less vociferously) in the fall, they frame the Capitol dome at the end of the long corridor and are a sight to rival the Tidal Basin cherry blossoms.

Consider visiting this weekend—the buds are about to pop.* Go early in the morning when the dew is still sparkling on the grassy strip between the rows. Get in there, between the trees, and say hello to the dandelions that dot the path. Walk slowly—the city noise is muffled and the traffic disappears from view, your face is in a billow of white flowers, and your mind wanders years from here.   

—Stephanie Cavanaugh

*If you need an additional incentive to visit, browse the crafts at Eastern Market and line up for dinner at around 3 pm at Roses Luxury (they take no reservations and the lines are an event of their own).

LittleBird “Stephanie Gardens” explores her leafy corner of Washington DC every Thursday.

Pasta Salad Primavera. / Photo on the front and above by Stephanie Witt Sedgwick.

I’VE BEEN DEVELOPING and testing recipes for more than 20 years, cooking the dishes at home the whole time. That’s a whole lot of food. Food my family wasn’t always home to eat or wasn’t suited for them. The beneficiaries of this food glut have been my neighbors Cliff and Sandy. While my family approached food photography and testing days with dread, because I was concentrating on cooking for the camera or the recipe rather than for them, Cliff and Sandy were always filled with anticipation. And of the hundreds of dishes I’ve carried across the street, one of their top 10 favorites was easily my Black and White Bean Primavera Salad.  

Primavera is a great food word—as an adjective describing food, it means with vegetables in a spring-like way. In reality, spring is slow to deliver any locally grown vegetables, but you get the idea. Lightly cooked vegetables, with or without herbs, are combined with pasta, rice, beans, etc., to make dishes that have the feeling of spring. At the chilly beginning of spring, this may mean a pasta primavera finished with cream and Parmesan cheese. Later, a light pasta salad with a simple dressing of chopped herbs, vinegar and olive oil. Or Cliff and Sandy’s fave, a bean salad. The same ingredients could just as easily become a primavera pilaf or a potato salad primavera.

Whatever the exact dish, in my kitchen, primavera includes a variety of vegetables, some combination of sweet onions, carrots, celery, asparagus, broccoli, peas, zucchini, baby spinach and sweet peppers. I don’t usually have them all on hand at the same time so the combos differ and my primavera is sometimes a clean-out-the-vegetable-drawer dish. Herbs are a wonderful addition; especially when you are keeping the dressings light, they bring a ton of flavor without much fuss.

The methodology for all the variations is the same. Dice, slice or julienne the vegetables and cook everything until just tender, even a little bit on the crunchy side. Combine with the other elements of choice, but remember the vegetables are the stars here. It’s the clean, fresh flavors of the vegetables themselves you’re hoping to highlight.

I’m losing my customers as Cliff and Sandy are downsizing and moving away, but they’ll still have the salad. It’s a recipe they have mastered along with some other versions we’re all fond of. Substitute the vegetables as you please.

• Pasta Salad Primavera: Choose a small pasta such as farfalline, orzo or ditalini. While the pasta cooks sauté equal amounts of diced sweet onion, sweet bell pepper, carrots, celery and zucchini until just tender, seasoning with salt and pepper. In a small pot, cook frozen sweet peas with a little water and salt until just done, then drain. Drain the pasta and rinse with cold water. Combine the cooked vegetables with the pasta, equal parts red wine vinegar and olive oil, chopped fresh herbs (parsley, chives and/or dill) and salt and freshly ground pepper as needed. Taste and add extra vinegar and seasoning as needed. You can refrigerate the salad until ready to serve, but bring to room temperature before serving.
• Black and White Bean Salad Primavera: Sauté equal amounts of diced sweet onion, sweet bell pepper, carrots, celery and zucchini until just tender, seasoning with salt and pepper. In a small pot, cook frozen sweet peas with a little water and salt until just done, then drain. Combine the cooked vegetables with the cooked black and white beans, equal parts red wine vinegar and olive oil, chopped fresh herbs (parsley, chives and/or dill) and salt and freshly ground pepper as needed. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. You can refrigerate the salad until ready to serve, but bring to room temperature before serving.

And the one Primavera my family always eats (must be the cream and cheese . . . ):

• Pasta Primavera: The classic, the granddaddy of all Primaveras. Steam small florets of broccoli and pieces of asparagus. Sauté sliced sweet onions, sweet bell peppers and julienned carrot with some salt and freshly ground pepper. You could add slices of zucchini, mushrooms, baby spinach and/or cooked peas—it’s up to you. Prepare fettuccine or the pasta of your choice. When the sautéed vegetables are ready, add the steamed broccoli and asparagus. Pour in heavy cream to almost cover the vegetables and add a healthy amount of Parmesan cheese. Let the mixture cook over medium heat for a few minutes until it starts to thicken. Mix with the drained pasta. Top with more freshly ground pepper and Parmesan and enjoy.

—Stephanie Witt Sedgwick

LittleBird “Stephanie Cooks” shares dinner ideas every Monday.