Summer is coming (how is it almost June?) and here is the first Friday Five of the season:
When the humidity arrives, you want to be cool without leaving the house in just a bathing suit and look pulled together without feeling smothered in fabric. Athleta’s wide-leg Cabo linen trousers, $99, are structured but breezy. The black is perfect for a fancy evening out while the white, worn with a white top, caramel leather accessories and gold jewelry, would be perfect for an outdoor lunch.
Germany holds asparagus festivals (Spargelzeit!) each May into June, and I think that North American culture is poorer for not sharing this tradition. To honour the greatest green spear of all time, I urge you to make this easy, soothing summer meal of jammy eggs, toast points and asparagus (recipe at the bottom of this post.)
Insanely charismatic French actor Omar Sy stars in The Takedown (Netflix) and I can’t decide if it’s a supremely dumb movie and that you should just (re)watch him in Lupin (also Netflix) or if The Takedown is just what the buddy cop film genre needs: lots of silly action with a forceful anti-racist message. Nothing is as chilling as the terrifyingly and loudly racist little, old white lady character thrown into the mix along with the expected evil white men in suits and prison-tattooed skinheads.
Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue Italian Love, 50 ml edt, $108, Sephora, is lemon-and-green-apple-with-flowers classic Light Blue set atop a richly musky and woody base. It’s quietly cozy and warming on cooler evenings but still irrefutably light and summery for those (you know they’re coming) humid days ahead.
I am easing myself into reading giant doorstopper summer novels by rereading Utz, paperback, $17, Chapters.Indigo, Bruce Chatwin’s slender 154 page novel about a porcelain collector living in Russian occupied Prague.
Asparagus & Eggs
Steam about six or seven asparagus spears per person (after having trimmed or snapped off the woody ends) four to five minutes until softened but not mushy.
If you have your own method for creating jammy eggs, then please use it. This is mine: slide two room-temperature eggs per person into water in a small saucepan on the stove and set the dial up to high. When the water begins to boil furiously, set the timer for 4 minutes exactly, turn the dial to medium high and keep an eye on it. Drain and plunge your eggs into cold water after the four minutes to stop them cooking. Peel them as soon as you can.
Meanwhile, toast and lightly butter some generously sliced sourdough and cut into points (toast points taste better than squares and the ends get dipped into your jammy yolks.)
Bisect your eggs lengthwise and arrange with the steamed asparagus spears in shallow pasta bowls, surround with buttered toast points, shave some parmesan into generous curls with a vegetable peeler and arrange on top. Finally, drizzle each dish with some peppery olive oil, sprinkle with sea salt crystals and a grinding of fresh pepper and that’s it. Early summer in a bowl.