Thank you for reading Between the Layers! Please enjoy and share this free post with your friends. A Springtime Ode to Asparagus - No. 280Rachel Phipps shares how to cook it in the microwave (gasp!) or eat it raw in a fabulous salad with lemon and toasted hazelnuts
I’m thrilled to welcome British food writer Rachel Phipps to Between the Layers today so she can tell us about her springtime obsession with asparagus and her mother Fiona’s unconventional microwave method of cooking asparagus, plus share that yummy salad recipe. Rachel writes a wonderful newsletter here on Substack called Ingredient where she shares what she’s cooking in the green English countryside. Check it out! - Anne I NEVER LIKED ASPARAGUS GROWING UP. I never understood it, and to me, it was just another green vegetable like all others, something I was never going to love until I started cooking it myself. My mother, on the other hand, has always been an asparagus obsessive, and whose behaviour very much set the benchmark for how I source my asparagus today. We were always on the lookout, driving the rural back lanes of the Kentish countryside for signs on farm gates advertising delicate spears of green for sale. I marvelled at the price she was willing to pay for a bunch, and I’d watch her methodically snap off the woody stems before blanching them swiftly in a splash of boiling water and a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt in the microwave. Always the microwave. And truthfully, it’s the only vegetable I’d consider cooking in there because it’s perfect every time.
My mother’s microwave asparagusWith delicate flavours and a characteristic crunch, asparagus is simple and clean. It heralds spring. Which is what made me finally fall in love with green English asparagus. It tastes verdant, with the promise of delicious things to come. So I didn’t want to over cook it. While some people may raise their eyebrows at my mother’s microwave method, I think it really does cook asparagus perfectly, which is tender, but with a good amount of bite. Here’s how she does it:
Cooking asparagus is tricky. You need that crunch in order to properly enjoy that grassy flavour. Cook it too much and it will take on the memory of over-cooked kale. How do you cook asparagus?
And then there was white asparagus…It was not the green Kentish asparagus I buy in the bunch that sold me on this springtime obsession as much as it was white French asparagus, the slightly pale kind you’ll find in all good French markets this time of year. France is a big part of the reason I love food and write about it. My grandparents lived in the south of France when I was young, and for a while my parents lived to the north in Brittany with the apples, mussels, oysters, and a savory buckwheat galette. But a press trip to the Perigord region in the Dordogne Valley introduced me to the local walnut liquor I adore, their little Gariguette strawberries and that white asparagus. Those white asparagus spears, simply steamed, drenched in butter— I can still remember biting into them for the first time.
As a kitchen gardener, asparagus also piques my interest as it is a rather unusual vegetable to grow, helping contribute to its usually lofty price for a humble vegetable: it takes three years after planting an asparagus crown until you get spears from it ready for the table, and they’ll be taking up space in your plot as they need to be grown in the ground, rather than containers all year, even though they have roughly just a six-week harvesting period. So, a light touch works best for asparagus, to preserve its unique flavor. In this recipe, the asparagus isn’t even cooked. Raw asparagus salad is perfect on its own for an asparagus lover’s dream lunch or as a side salad to a larger meal. With the sharp, creamy, salty pecorino cheese, the warming, crunchy toasted hazelnuts, and just a hint of acidity from the lemon, you’ll be as obsessed about asparagus as I am.
THE RECIPE: Asparagus Salad with Lemon, Hazelnuts and PecorinoRaw asparagus is not celebrated enough. With a pleasant crunch and its sought-after flavour becoming - if possible - even more verdant than before it is cooked, it is one of those things that is best eaten the moment it hits the dressing. Here I’ve added toasted hazelnuts, sharp, salty pecorino, a hint of lemon and lots of my best extra virgin olive oil. It’s so good, I’m guilty of eating the entire bowlful in one sitting. Serves 1 to 2
You’re on the free list for Anne Byrn: Between the Layers. If you’re liking what you’re reading, why don’t you become a paying subscriber for more recipes, stories, and content.
|
0 comments:
Post a Comment