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Imagine you’re opening a restaurant and want to create a signature cocktail for your bar. Now, get out a pen and pad of paper and start writing down possible ingredients.

Two fine foods are in season right now: B.C. spot prawns and asparagus. In today’s recipe, I’ve combined the two and served them on a popular dish: Risotto. Risotto is a marvellous creation that starts with plain rice.

The Victoria Day weekend is almost here and if you have been invited to a casual dinner party, you’ll ask what you can bring.

When deciding what to write about this week, I noticed today was Mother’s Day.

Wow your guests with a simple, trendy charcuterie board filled with an array of items

Everything else is there — corned beef, Swiss cheese, sauerkraut and even a drizzle of Russian dressing

The overnight sensation takes time. Consider farro. The chewy grain turns up everywhere. It stars in soup, salad and sweets. It doubles for rice, for barley, for pasta. It poses in the spring salad bristling with asparagus and fennel — Insta-glam.

Cinco de Mayo is on Friday and that occasion seems to be a bigger celebration outside Mexico than it is in that country. According to an article on the History Channel website, history.

Like many carnivores, I find it very hard to resist pork back ribs, especially when they’re cooked until the meat is rich-tasting, succulent, tender and almost falling off the bone.

One of the first Island-grown produce items you’ll see for sale at farm markets and grocery stores this spring are bags of salad greens, containing an assortment of young lettuces and other flavourful shoots. In the bag of Kildara Farm (kildarafarms.