It’s been two years (!) since we embarked on our color dinner adventure, and we decided to give it a second go round. With so many more things to test and taste, we just couldn’t leave each color to a single glorious rendition. And so, we embarked on Color Dinners: Redux.

As our dinners are seasonal, we started back at the beginning, where we began, with green.

color dinner no. 8: green redux.

With the harsh winter we’ve had (which was actually — amazingly — predicted by the Farmer’s Almanac), we were worried that a May day dinner would leave us wanting for greens. Our fears were unfounded, and in a testament to earth’s great bounty, only two items from the previous Green iteration made a reappearance: spinach, and olives!

This time, we feasted on green (deviled) eggs and ham, okonomiyaki (dyed a spinachy-green), and a plethora of green dips — spring onion aioli, a German Grüne Soße (whose glorious color comes from watercress!) and our favorite tomatillo salsa — with dip-able greens: asparagus, bell peppers, green cauliflower, string beans and snap peas. 

(All this, and still, no kale. We are not very good New Yorkers.)

Dinner followed with a ramp pesto risotto, a spicy spinach and chard soup, spaghetti with basil pesto and green (!) meatballs, and our classic colored pasta.

As it was our first attempt at green pasta, and we weren’t sure what would give us the best color, we tried three possible dyes: (left > right) spinach, spring onions, and roasted bell peppers.

The unexpected color queen? Spring onions!

With so much pasta on hand, we thought we’d try our hand at tri-colored ravioli, using two pasta colors, and the rest of the spinach as a filling.

We drank mint juleps in honor of the recent Derby, and for a sweet touch at the end, served matcha green tea ice cream, with homemade matcha sprinkles!

Voilà!