And Jenna Charlton tells us how she came across the magic of tomatillos while trying, finally, her hand at farming -- with her baby in tow. (Recipe for tomatillo salsa verde included.)

In the Turkish Delight category:

Kipouros, for a super-cool green garlic-yogurt-chickpea soup with mint oil, the kind of dish that pulls off the trick of being refreshing and satisfying at the same time. (Recipe for Şiveydiz included.)

In the Parenting With Chlorophyll category:

Mamie Chen, for a lesson in success and failure told in green-curry-infused hard-boiled eggs (really!), based on a classic Chinese snack, tea-eggs. There's also a fascinating lesson on how to extract super-green chlorophyll from green foods. (Recipe for green curry deviled eggs included.)

In the Steak and Sauce category:

Walter Blevins, for a post on chimichurri, the explosive garlic-herb Argentine sauce for grilled beef. (Recipes for chimichurri and Santa Maria-style tri-tip steak included.)

In the Lunchbox category:

Lisa Kuebler, for the cutest four-leaf-clover-shaped cheese sandwich you or her kids ever did see. I want to give that sandwich a hug!

And in the Putting the Fun Back in Fasting category:

Trixie Dorais, for fun tips and guidelines for ... a green-vegetable soup fast. I admit that my first reaction was of stunned disbelief, but this kind of convinced me: "Four days is the magic number. On day one, I am confident and excited. By day two, reality has reared its ugly head, but I am halfway done! By day three, I question the value of my existence, but tomorrow it will be over. By day four, I question the value of the universe, but I’ve succeeded. Hooray for me and my petty victories!" I mean, how do we best appreciate what we enjoy unless we deny ourselves from time to time? (Guidelines for green soup included.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE:

It seems like forever since the Super Bowl, right before Mardi Gras, officially made New Orleans the partyingest place on Earth. But in anticipation of that night, we ran a Kitchen Challenge calling for your best game-time snacks. And, shockingly, only one person came through with a method for chicken wings. (Thanks, Lisa Kuebler!) Only one! For the most sleazily lovable of all foods!

And the demand for wings continues. After weeks of receiving reader e-mails wondering what happened to all the wings we were hoping to see, let's give this another shot:

This week, the challenge is to rock your best wings: Are they fried, grilled, baked, roasted? Will you go fancy and confit them? Get controversial and boil them? We're ready, be they tarted up with sauces or sticky with glazes or rubbed dry with spices. And in the spirit of exoticism, extra points for wings from non-chicken birds!

Be sure to tag your posts: SKC wings

Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and resisting the pun "wingin' it" in your post. 

Spring is all about green -- the pine trees get lost in the woods among the leafed-out hardwoods. The daffodils send their chlorophyll-plumped stems to the sky, the grass awakens and replaces its brown blanket with a verdant one. The markets start to show off green as well -- forget the coarse, bitter greens of winter, welcome the tender spinach and lettuces of spring. Woody herbs fade and the tender ones appear, in the market and the garden.

I guess you could say I have a garden; it's really just a glorified flower bed, home to daffodils, crocuses, lamb's ears, a few ornamental grasses and a selection of herbs. The rosemary, lavender and oregano are steady friends, surviving the winters and bouncing back every summer. I plant basil when the ground warms; it has no chance of surviving the winter here. The mint, however, like cockroaches and Keith Richards, could survive a nuclear holocaust and still thrive. I used to keep mint in pots, a sane proposition to contain its trailer trash ways. Last year, in a temporary lapse of judgment, I let my daughter transfer the mint to the flower bed. The plant promptly became viral, spreading faster than an ultra-conservative anti-presidential diatribe on Facebook. In the cool days of fall, I pulled up runners 4 feet long, snaking through the bulbs and shrubs in the bed. Even the roots smelled like Doublemint gum.

The freshness inherent in mint makes it a cool choice for a spring dessert. Enter the Grasshopper pie, a dessert based on a cocktail consisting of crème de cacao and crème de menthe. As tempting as that boozy concoction sounds, I remade it to serve children. In church cookbooks (and maybe this is a Southern thing, but I suspect it's more of a rural America thing) you'll find recipes created without alcohol with the qualifier "Baptist." As in "Baptist Harvey Wallbanger Cake" and "Baptist Grasshopper Pie." Well, this is a Baptist Grasshopper Cake. Dark chocolate layers, a fluffy minty filling, covered with a glossy chocolate ganache glaze. It's like an Andes Candies cake, cool and refreshing, with an unnerving green ribbon through the middle.

I put this cake together using recipes from the "King Arthur Flour's Baker's Companion," a reliable cookbook for family baking. Like Shirley Corriher's "Bakewise" and Rose Levy Beranbaum's "Cake Bible," it's the kind of cookbook that helps aspiring bakers turn ideas into reasonably attractive culinary creations.

My unique spin on this dessert is the chocolate mint leaves. It's been a few years (OK, a decade, or maybe two) since I've turned these out, but they are fun to make with children and really dress up a cake. Take fresh, clean mint leaves and press them between two layers of paper towels and weight with a book. You want flat, unfurled leaves. You may have good results with a paint brush alone (make sure it's impeccably clean), but my best results were with a combination of a baby feeding spoon and a stiff child's paintbrush. Melt 2 ounces of white chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate in microwave and stir until smooth. Place parchment paper on baking sheet. Take a flattened leaf, and working on the underside of the leaf, place a teaspoon of chocolate on the leaf. Use the brush to spread the chocolate to the edges of the leaf. Do this fairly thickly and evenly. Place finished leaves on tray and place in refrigerator to cool. When set, carefully peel off the leaf, beginning at stem end. Arrange finished leaves on cake or individual plates.

This cake would be quite nice served as dessert at an Easter family meal. Easter, as sure a sign that spring is here as any. 

Chocolate Mint Cake (adapted from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion)

1 ¾ cups sugar
2 ¼ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons cornstarch
¾ cups Dutch-process cocoa
¾ cup buttermilk (preferably whole-fat buttermilk)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
½ cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup hot water

1. Preheat oven to 350. Lightly grease and flour two 9-inch round cake pans.
2. In a large bowl, stir together the sugar, flour, cornstarch, cocoa, buttermilk, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the eggs, buttermilk, oil and vanilla; beat on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stir in the hot water (the batter will be thin) and pour batter into pans.
3. Bake the cakes for 30 to 35 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean. Cool for 10 minutes in the pans, then turn them out to cool on a wire rack.

Grasshopper Mint Filling (adapted from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion)

¼ cup vegetable shortening
¼ cup (½ stick) unsalted butter
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon peppermint extract
1 cup powdered sugar
¼ cup corn syrup
1 cup marshmallow crème
Green food paste

1. Beat together the shortening, butter, salt, vanilla extract, peppermint extract, and powdered sugar, until fluffy.
2. Gradually beat in the corn syrup, until well blended. Add the marshmallow crème and beat until fluffy. Add the green food paste a dab at a time until the frosting reaches the desired level of greenness.

Dark Chocolate Glaze (adapted from The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion)

1 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons light corn syrup
Pinch of salt
12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1. Place the cream, corn syrup and salt in a small saucepan and warm over low heat. Add chocolate and stir. Continue heating until the chocolate has melted and the mixture is smooth.
2. Cool, stirring occasionally, for 10 to 15 minutes, so that the glaze thickens slightly, but is still pourable.

To assemble cake: spread mint filling between layers and cover cake with chocolate glaze. Decorate cake with mint chocolate leaves.

 

I thought of Entwistle when I thought of asparagus for this week's Kitchen Challenge. It's always off on the side of the plate, maybe pickled or in hollandaise, while prime rib or slices of lamb take center stage and get all the attention. "There's no way asparagus can make it as a solo act," I thought, and gave up. Then I thought of an asparagus tart, and the wispy rhymes of a mental recipe began to form verses.

A tart requires a pastry and a sauce, that's pretty obvious. The first hit on "asparagus tart," was Asparagus Gruyère Tart and the Gruyère immediately brought Quiche Lorraine to mind.

Attempts to visualize asparagus with bacon, the other classic quiche ingredient, also produced too many straight lines to suit me. Now, earlier in the week I'd made some country ham (with red eye gravy), "the American prosciutto," and bulbs lit up on the marquee, spelling out "prosciutto." I just happened to have some in the fridge! It would make a nice color contrast with the green and purple of asparagus.

After a little more research on tart recipes, I decided to just roll out a piece of thawed puff pastry and not even bother making something from scratch.

That settled, I knew I wanted the sauce to be something like custard of quiche, but what I really wanted was hollandaise. That, of course, would never survive in a hot oven, turning into scrambled eggs awash in butter. Maybe something in between could be approximated, like custard with lemon juice and butter and more egg yolks. The lemon juice would be problematic, since it would curdle milk, but then I remembered (from reading "Milk in a Can Goes Glam" in the New York Times) that evaporated milk does not curdle in the presence of acids. Unfortunately, the process of combining all that would involve flying by the seat of the pants since it was just something I made up.

I heated up everything but the butter (which had been melted and was cooling) very, very slowly at first, whisking constantly, almost insanely. I gradually kicked the heat up to medium, whisking my ass off, and checking the temperature frequently. At 150°F, the sauce began to foam and thicken a bit and, by 155°, it seemed thick enough to take on the butter. I transferred the sauce to the bowl of a stand mixer, attached the wire whisk, and fired 'er up to medium speed (which seemed about right after a couple glasses of red wine). I drizzled in the butter. Nothing exploded, so I let it run while I poured myself another glass. It looked "about right" by then. I congratulated myself with a toast, and only one question lingered -- could it stand up to being baked at 400° without disintegrating? (Spoiler alert: It did, but the flavor was neither custard nor hollandaise. Maybe that's what "in between" is. It is buttery and lemony and a pretty darned good sauce -- a keeper, now that I figured out how to do it.)

The classic method of separating tender asparagus shoots from the "woody" stalks, gently bending from the tip down until it has enough resistance to snap, is great but it sure leaves a lot of waste. Weight-wise, the ends represented over half of my $3 asparagus investment. I couldn't just throw them away. I could put them in a stock pot, but at that very moment, the prosciutto marquee lit up again with a new message. "Dehydrate," it said. So I peeled, chopped, blanched (2 minutes), and threw 'em into Excalibur. After 4 hours, they went into the spice mill and netted about 3 tablespoons of powder (from 30 stalks). Not everyone has a dehydrator, I realize, but this worked out very well on the crust with the cheese.

I also peeled the stalks remaining on the shoots, but that isn't necessary; it just looked nicer to me, better than those warty bumps. I blanched the spears for 1 minute to make sure they would be cooked. (I wasn't sure how long they would be in the oven, so I played it safe. I'd also considered broiling the toppings, but that wasn't necessary.)

Now, let's cook ...

Asparagus Tart LeDou
Serves 6

For the crust:

1 sheet (9 ounces) prepared puff pastry, thawed
2 ounces grated Gruyère cheese (about 1 cup)
3 tablespoons dried asparagus stems, powdered (optional)
3 tablespoons butter softened
1 egg white (note: yolks used in sauce) + 1 tablespoons water

1. Preheat oven to 425°.
2. Roll thawed puff pastry on a lightly floured surface to approximately 12 inches by 20 inches. Line a half sheet pan with parchment. Transfer pastry to sheet pan. Roll and crimp ½ inch around edges. Spread butter evenly on the rest of the crust, then sprinkle with cheese and powdered stems (if using). Paint crust edges with egg wash. Bake for 4 minutes then remove from oven and dock the bubbles that have risen in the dough with a dinner fork. Return to oven, rotated 180°. Bake another 4 minutes and dock again, if necessary, to flatten crust.
3. Lower oven temperature to 400°.

For the sauce:

1 12-ounce can evaporated milk ("not sweetened condensed," you're always supposed to say. Some people add "dumbass" to that, but we're more polite.)
Juice of ½ lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
Zest from 1 lemon
Pinch freshly grated nutmeg
Pinch freshly ground white pepper
2 whole eggs
4 egg yolks
2 ounces butter (½ stick), cut into 4 pieces
Salt, to taste

1. Whisk together eggs and yolks in a medium bowl
2. Combine remaining ingredients except butter and salt in a 2-quart saucepan and cook over medium heat. Keep whisking to prevent scorching until it is hot but not boiling, about 160 degrees on a thermometer.
3. Off heat, whisk a third of the milk mixture into the eggs; when it's combined, whisk in the rest. Pour it all back into the pan and set over moderate-low heat. Whisk constantly until the sauce is 160°, or when mixture has visibly thickened. Remove from heat and whisk in butter. Add salt to taste.

For the toppings and final assembly:

30 trimmed asparagus stalks, peeled down from the tips, blanched (1 minute in boiling water, drained, and placed in ice water)
12 slices prosciutto

1. Pour sauce into 6 circles on the crust (see picture), using about 1/3 cup for each circle. Place 2 slices of prosciutto above or below each sauce circle, approximating a folding fan shape. Complete the fan shape by placing 6 asparagus spear "slats" on each circle.
2. Bake in 400° oven for 5 minutes, then rotate 180° and bake for another 5-8 minutes until edges of crust are brown.

I found myself picking off a couple of the asparagus spears, dipping them in the sauce, and eating them just like that -- a sure sign that a sideman vegetable had taken over. They even upstage the prosciutto.

About the name: Years ago, I made an onion tart and brought it to work to share. A co-worker came over and asked if he could have a slice of pizza. I told him to help himself, but that it was a tart, not pizza. He asked me to explain and I told him that the crust was puff pastry, not yeast dough, the sauce was a seasoned béchamel, not tomato, that the onions had been caramelized and there was no cheese. None of these distinctions mattered, however, and he simply asked again, "Well, how is that any different from pizza. It looks like pizza."

He had me there, especially since I had started to think of California pizza. The man responsible for blurring the line between a tart and pizza was Spago's founding pizza chef Ed LaDou. Under the tutelage of Wolfgang Puck and later at California Pizza Kitchens, he brought mass confusion to an entire generation and entire nations about what constituted pizza. I'm sure he wouldn't mind my naming an asparagus tart after him. This one's for you, Ed. 

Paul Hinrichs! Paul does his best Cook's Illustrated impersonation and gives us a detailed explication of how he worked his way through his delicious recipe for asparagus and prosciutto tart -- including an optional but super-creative touch: powdering the woody stalks that would otherwise get thrown out. For the rest of us, though, even without dehydrators and an extra four hours, this dish can be a sophisticated but accessible weeknight dinner. (Recipe for asparagus and prosciutto tart included.)

AND HOW ABOUT A HAND FOR OUR CATEGORY WINNERS?

In the Starting From Scratch category:

Ablonde, for sharing helpful, basic information on asparagus cleaning, keeping and treatment. (Recipe for asparagus with anchovy-garlic butter sauce included.)

In the Legacy category:

Dino Romano, for a memory of how his family came to work farmland with a history. (Recipe for pasta with asparagus, bacon and sautéed apples included.)

For extraordinary NOM NOM NOM:

Outside Myself shares a favorite dish featuring asparagus caramelized in the oven, topped with ricotta, and baked in thin crepes until golden with cheese and cream. (Recipe for crespelle with asparagus and mushrooms included.)

In the Honeymoon category:

Lucy Mercer, with an asparagus soup and sandwich that brings back memories of the springtime of her marriage. (Recipes for Crucian asparagus sandwich and creamy asparagus soup with lemon-chive butter included.)

In the Remembrance of Teachers Past category:

Rebecca Farwell, for a memory of an old mentor, whose asparagus patch she aspires to replicate. (Method for asparagus ravioli with ricotta and prosciutto included.)

In the Homage category:

Linda Shiue, for a tribute to an old, distant favorite restaurant. (Recipe for grilled asparagus with curry, lime and lemongrass aioli included.)

In the 10-minute Appetizer category:

Jessie Reiss, for a super-simple and creative way to turn asparagus into party treats. (Recipe for crisp asparagus pastries included.)

In the Spago Would be Proud category:

Lisa Kuebler, for a super-quick weeknight asparagus, goat cheese and ham pizza (Recipe included.)

And in the Presentation category:

Mamie Chen, with a fun way to get her kids to eat their vegetables: present asparagus spears standing in a pool of aioli in a snifter glass. One hopes the kids don't get more into holding the snifter than eating the vegetables, though.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

"So for the week of St. Patrick's Day, I think the Kitchen Challenge should be about making your best potato dishes," I said to my boss.

He is a kind and supportive man, but he could barely hide his disappointment. "... Potatoes?"

"Uh, yeah. You know, Irish food."

Crickets.

"They eat a lot of potatoes in Ireland."

Dead crickets.

"OK, I'll get back to the drawing board."

And I avoided it for a while, because, well, I happen to think potatoes are pretty exciting. But then, I got an invitation from him for our company St. Patrick's Day potluck, complete with instructions.

So, hey, and I'm just going to repurpose them for this week's challenge: let's see your best/favorite/funnest green food. Bonus points if it's food that's not usually green. Triple bonus points if it's not just a salad. And, because we really want to see your entries, photos are extra important!

Be sure to tag your posts: SKC green food

Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and, well, greenness. 

Just as often, when I think of tea time, come images of old Asian men dressed in undershirts and flip-flops, tall glass mugs of tea sweetened with condensed milk, coconut jam covered toast, fish grilled in banana leaf packets, and meat-filled flatbreads dipped in curry sauce. Intrigued? Let me tell you a story about afternoon tea in Singapore.

Singapore, where I spent most of my junior year of college, gained independence from England only in 1965, and many remnants of British culture remain in this still-young country. This is where I first adopted the ritual of afternoon tea. Afternoon tea in Singapore is incongruous in many ways. First of all, Singapore's tropical heat and humidity could beat the conditions in a wet sauna; I could not understand why anyone would willingly drink cup after cup of nearly boiling tea in that weather. (I later understood the traditional Chinese medicine concept of drinking hot liquids to cool the body.) Second, I already liked my tea English-style -- strong, black tea with milk. I was affronted, horrified, and I'll admit, scornful of what the locals knew as tea. Yes, it was black tea, mellowed with milk. But it was also thickly sweetened with condensed milk and often not brewed fresh, but made from an instant powder.

The tea served at the Raffles Hotel, on the other hand, would certainly be more like in the Motherland, England: refined, delicate and just-so. But I wouldn't know, because I never had the privilege of having a cuppa there.

The story behind this is the tale my husband has heard thousands of times over the last almost 20 years, the one during the telling of which he actually will cover up his ears, even in the company of people we might want to impress, or at least not scare away. But it is a good one, so I will share it with you, my new audience.

I was a student (i.e., poor), I was from a liberal university (i.e., a little bohemian), and it was hot (definitely no stockings for me, regardless of the dress code). I had been living there for at least four months at this point, and while I was no longer dripping sweat constantly, I could not wear the sweaters and tights that the local girls could, as if they were in merry old England. There was a lot of excitement surrounding the grand reopening of the famed Raffles Hotel, which had undergone its first major renovation in the years prior to my arrival. This is the place that invented the Singapore Sling (another too-sweet drink) and the former hangout of Somerset Maugham, in the days when tigers might have still been found roaming the streets of this former jungle. It was the archetype of British colonial architecture and society. As such, "she" was considered a venerable institution, to be respected.

So I combed my hair, which went crazy wild in that humidity, put on a neat outfit of a top and shorts, and excitedly walked inside, where I saw lots of other tourists milling about, in similar or even more casual attire. I gazed at the beautifully restored woodwork, and made my way back toward the famed Long Bar to have a taste of the Singapore Sling, at its birthplace. But I didn't quite make it there. I was stopped by a uniformed employee, who gently directed me outside. "No shorts are allowed. This is an expensive hotel."

"Pardon me?" I asked. "What about all those other people?" I gestured to the long-haired Australians in their board shorts and flip-flops, lounging casually and having a raucous good time.

"They are guests here."

I was embarrassed, but wondered what made me look like someone who could not possibly be a guest at "an expensive hotel." It wasn't my clothing that made me stand out. In fact, I suspected that my welcome was because I didn't stand out-- I looked like a "local."

I discussed the incident back in the hostel's canteen (dorm cafeteria) with my local friends. They immediately and unanimously concluded that it was the customary discrimination against locals, while pandering to Western (appearing) tourists. They shrugged it off, it was such a commonplace occurrence to them. But I was enraged, on my own behalf but also theirs.

I wrote my first ever letter to the editor to the Straits Times, the local/national newspaper (it's a very small country), in which I implied that the hotel had race-based double standards. I kept the clippings from my letter, which I think still emanates heat 20 years later. In it, I concluded, "It reminded me of what the glorious Raffles must have been like in colonial times -- attentive Asian staff catering to every caprice of their esteemed Western guests. Perhaps the newly renovated Raffles hotel should also update her thinking."

Like a harbinger of blog posts gone viral, this letter generated a month of responses. A few sadly sympathized that there were post-colonial attitudes, but the vast majority threw insults at me, someone they had never met or seen. I was called "scruffy and sloppy." The best insult was "Raffles hotel is no place for ...  scruffy or unkempt visitors. For these people, there are lots of coffee houses, beer lounges, karaoke joints and perhaps even hawker centres."

The Sunday Times had a full editorial dedicated to the subject of ... me. And the major tabloid did an investigative report where they sent two journalists, separately, to reenact my actions. One was Caucasian, one was a local Singaporean Chinese. They were both dressed in bike shorts (I would never!), and each went in the lobby, as I had done. In the end, both were thrown out, though the Chinese one by a good 10 minutes earlier. The conclusion was that there was no discrimination. Yes, these were my 15 minutes of infamy.

So, very long story short, this is why I never got to have afternoon tea at the Raffles. I am sure it is lovely.

But for the riffraff like me, I got to drink with the locals. You could wear anything to the kopi tiams, or coffee houses, all over the city. Most people wore flip-flops, T-shirts, shorts, and the older men would wear their uniform of yellowed cotton tank tops, scruffy shorts or pajama pants, and flip-flops. I learned to love the condensed milk sweetened tea. I also enjoyed two other variations, all considered somewhat crass, and favored by recent immigrants or serious local food buffs: teh tarik and teh halia. Teh tarik, Malay for "pulled tea," is the same strong and sweet black tea, but poured from great heights between two cups to create a bubbly froth on top. Teh halia is a potent black tea, again sweetened with condensed milk, offset by a spicy ginger bite, and lightened with the tarik method.

These hearty teas would overpower the frou-frou tea sandwiches that pair well with English teas. Instead of those, you might have kaya toast, thick cut, heavily buttered and spread with this coconut milk-based jam. Or you could have otak-otak, a fish paste grilled in banana leaves. Plain roti paratha (Indian flatbread) or murtabak, a spicy meat filled flatbread served with a curry sauce, make good accompaniments as well.

Any of these teas would make a great hot drink for a cold winter's day, or for a hot (or hot-headed) one in the tropics.

Teh Halia (Ginger tea) (Serves 4)

Black tea, 4-5 teaspoons leaves or 4 teabags
1 inch fresh ginger root, peeled and sliced into quarter-size pieces
4 cups of water
Condensed milk

1. Boil ginger slices in water for at least 10 minutes (the longer your boil it, the stronger the ginger flavor).
2. Add your favorite strong black tea to the ginger/water brew and allow to steep for 5 minutes.
3. Add a few teaspoons of condensed milk to each of 4 teacups or mugs. Strain tea into teacups.
4. "Tarik" the tea by pouring back and forth between a filled and empty cup, until frothy. Enjoy immediately.

Kaya (Coconut Egg Jam)

2 cups of coconut milk (ideally from two fresh coconuts, but canned is more than fine)
10 large eggs
1 1/2 to 2 cups of granulated white sugar, adjusted to taste
1 teaspoon pandan extract (extract of a tropical leaf, added for both fragrance and green color. May be omitted.)

Accompaniments: bread and butter

1. Beat eggs with an electric mixer until just blended.
2. Add in sugar until well combined. Then add in coconut milk and continue mixing until the mixture has a smooth consistency.
3. Pour mixture into a heavy pan, then cook over low heat, stirring constantly until mixture caramelizes and thickens. Take off heat and add pandan extract, if available. (Without pandan extract, the jam will be caramel colored.)
4. Toast thickly cut white or wheat bread. Spread lots of butter on top. Spread kaya on top of butter, and enjoy with teh tarik or teh halia. 

Linda Shiue, for her story about how racism and a pair of shorts thwarted her attempt to get a cup of refined Singapore tea (and for giving us a recipe that can be consumed by anybody, anywhere, no matter where you live, or what you're wearing). (Recipe for teh halia ginger tea and kaya coconut egg jam included.)

AND HOW ABOUT A HAND FOR OUR CATEGORY WINNERS?

In the Forbidden Drinks category:

Lisa Kuebler for a moving story of her family's struggle with alcoholism, and the one time her 25-year-sober grandmother made her a very special hot toddy. (Recipe for a hot toddy included.)

In the Sweet Revenge category:

Jenna Charlton sticks it to the "scarf brigade" (everybody's least-favorite farmer's market staple) with a recipe for made-from-scratch hot chocolate that, unlike that particular species of urban hippie, doesn't trade taste for principle. (Recipe for simple chocolate-y hot chocolate included.)

In the Candy Bar category:

Lucy Mercer comes up with an unexpected and creative use for all of your leftover Valentine's Day candy -- turning it into hot chocolate. Ever wondered what it would taste like to drink a Three Musketeers? Here's your chance. (Recipe for candy bar hot chocolate included.)

In the Warm Milk category:

Mamie Chen explains why she developped the baffling habit of ordering a cup of warmed-up soy milk at Starbucks  -- and how a move to Hong Kong cured her of it. (Recipe for soy milk with ginger syrup included.)

In the Immigrant Memories category:

Krishna Shenoy shares her immigrant mother's recipe, which celebrates India's Kojaagari Purnima harvest festival. (Recipe for saffron almond milk included.)

In the Turkish Delight category:

Füsun Atalay explains the tradition and strong taste of Turkish coffee, and how one cup can help predict your future. (Recipe for turkish coffee included.)

AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

"We like March - his Shoes are Purple -" With that line, Emily Dickinson greeted the early spring, arriving in new-shoots style. But while she may have been picturing the purple of grape hyacinth flowers, our spring purple is found in the tips of asparagus. Their season doesn't go into full green roar for another few weeks for many of us, but around this time, it's easy to start obsessing slightly about them, readying ourselves for what to do when they start appearing in earnest in local markets.

So, to get ready for that happy, happy time, can you share your finest asparagus recipes and memories? Just make sure to tag your posts: SKC asparagus

Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and hopefulness.