For last night's French dinner with Suz (we were watching La Vie En Rose and decided to have a dinner with French food, hence the new cookbook), I was going to make a soup to go along with the spinach gratin, but also wanted to use the fancy china, for which I have no bowls. So, asparagus it was! I think that was a good decision because it was a little warm in the house after all the baking I did yesterday. Anyway, Julia Child says her favorite way to cook asparagus involved tying it up in a bundle and then boiling it for 15 minutes! That seems a) complicated, and b) too much cooking for such a tender veggie. I checked my Italian cookbook, and it said the best way to cook asparagus was also to tie it in a bundle, but to steam it for 10 minutes. I don't know what's up with this tying, but 10 minutes seemed too long, too. Under Suz's guidance, we steamed it loose in my steamer, with about 2 inches of salted water (or, you can try salting just the veggies) for 3 minutes, and that was perfect. I really don't see the need for this bundling, and I think cooking it any longer would turn such tender veggies into mush.
The other big question mark for the asparagus was what to serve it with. Julia recommends various sauces, the easiest of which involves reducing lemon juice to a syrup, then mixing in a stick of butter!!. I mean, really. It's not like this is a bad tasting vegetable! It isn't plain, either, like potatoes or something. By contrast, my Italian cookbook recommends putting just a teeny bit of butter on the asparagus and letting it melt through with a little cheese sprinkled on top. That's what I did and it was very tasty. I think this might illustrate a difference between Italian cooking (which Mario says is about preparing food as simply as possible) and Parisian French cooking (where Julia was trained) where the emphasis seems to be on richness and sauces. I definitely lean toward Italian, although I'm looking forward to trying more things from Julia's book.
Stay tuned for the adventures in Shortbread!
2 comments:
My favorite way to eat asparagus (from Clydes):
Lightly steam them so that they are al dente, put them on a plate, drizzle with EVOO, and sprinkle them with sea salt, fresh ground pepper, lemon rind, real parmasean cheese, and toasted pine nuts. Eat the asparagus and then clean the plate with crusty bread.
Yum.
That sounds yummo, as Rachel Ray would say, but how long is al dente? That's the question.
Will try that the next time I get asparagus.
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