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In stores asparagus Yes all year round, and in general, it does not matter whether it is spring or winter. Because even in April-May, in the very season, we can only timidly hope that this expensive pleasure, barely collected, was delivered by the first flight from France directly to the porch of the restaurant. Rarely do we have the opportunity to go with a basket to the market and buy asparagus white, green, purple – and just picked. It’s a pity.
How to cook asparagus
Cooking asparagus is easy (it is important not to overcook it, like seafood, so as not to lose color), but tell me how to effectively name the guests a line from the menu: “Friends, today I cooked for you asparagus with Scottish smoked salmon with ginger sauce”. It sounds solemn and even slightly defiant. Guests who do not have culinary talents are acutely aware of their inferiority. A little work in the kitchen.
If you manage to get a good asparagus, keep in mind: this vegetable is combined with almost all existing products: even with Parma ham, even with tuna, even with curry, even with pears and peaches. It looks very advantageous in salads (for example, with a variety of leafy, red onions and peas with vinaigrette dressing and freshly ground black pepper, as the idol chef Gordon Ramsay suggests, but he will not advise badly).
But the easiest and most delicious way to deal with asparagus – simply blanch it (cutting off the thick stems beforehand and leaving only a few centimeters of the delicate top) in boiling salted water for 3-4 minutes. The asparagus will become juicy and tender, and nothing else is needed.
One can bake it for a few minutes under grated Parmesan, or immediately serve with sauce… The most famous asparagus sauce – Dutch (some yolks, some lemon juice, some butter, salt and cayenne pepper). Anyone is good creamy and citric, and even homemade aromatic oil with herbs, slightly melted on asparagus, makes a luxury dish out of it.
Asparagus: other recipes
To go to the next level (if on the previous one you have collected all possible bonuses), you can take restaurant recipes into your arsenal, with the participation of risotto and porcini mushrooms stewed in garlic sauce, and black cod with mountain ash sauce, and milfey with crab meat, marble cut and aged gorgonzola.
By season young asparagus metropolitan restaurants prepare different – who surpasses whom – themed menus, in which a stew of asparagus, morels and crayfish is combined with an asparagus appetizer with truffles, quail breast and lobster gravy; all this is offered to be washed down with freshly squeezed asparagus juice, and the lunch is completed with a dessert – like asparagus strudel with cheese or asparagus-strawberry pannacotta.
Asparagus: beneficial properties
Asparagus in all these expensive-sounding gastronomic delights should still remain the same – slightly poached, soft, but not too, say, al dente. Otherwise, there is no point: that’s why it is called the favorite vegetable of various French Louis. In April anyway vitamins so much that she even serves the cause prevention of heart disease, and quite successfully.
However, most of asparagus lovers rather like the legend of its omnipotence in another area – they say, a night of love for a plate of asparagus … You probably also heard. So go to the bazaar anyway – just in case. Nowadays, you never know what to find where and how it appeared there.
Asparagus species
Asparagus comes in a variety of colors… Green, white. Less commonly sold purple asparagus – this is if you hold it longer in the sun, but not many risk this – it is easy to overdo it.
White asparagus more expensive than green – they are one and the same, only green asparagus grows like a normal vegetable in the garden, and the white ripens underground, deprived of sunlight, carefully huddled and ultimately more tender. Belaya is the main guest performer in April and May, the star of the most enchanting restaurant menus. Green, which is simpler, is more common in stores and markets.