Steve Shaw, I learned to eat rice salad in the south of France, where pasta salads and lentil-bean salads are also a thing. At the height of summer, you make it early in the morning when the heat isn’t blistering quite yet, and let it sit and think about itself (the French have a word for that — mijoter) until lunchtime, when you eat it with a glass of cold white wine and then lie down for a while if you have any sense.

The first Ontario asparagus is in, hallelujah, and I bought a kilo. I can eat asparagus until I piss green. With hollandaise sauce, it’s a dish fit for the Prince of Baden, but it’s also fine poached for six minutes and raced to the table with a squirt of fresh lemon juice.