Asparagus for the Rest of Us
May 18th, 2009Finally a warm weekend in Eastern Oregon. It felt so good. I am getting my herb garden planted. The sage and a couple of different thymes survived our winter, but everything else has to be replaced. I love planting herbs; my hands smell so good after handling the plants.
Our asparagus is ripe and can be found at our local Farmer’s Market held on Main Street on Friday night, or any of the fruit and vegetable stands scattered around the area. Asparagus is great for that I-need-a-party-snack-now-and-I-want-it-to-look-and-taste-great moment. Just blanch it in a large pot of rapidly boiling salted water for a couple of minutes and then plunge it into an ice water bath. I use my pasta pot with an insert so I can immediately pull all the asparagus out of the boiling water and put in the ice water. I keep a bath towel that is only used in the kitchen to dry the asparagus after it has cooled in the ice water. Once the asparagus is dry I quite often wrap it in thinly sliced prosciutto, pile it on a pretty platter and off I go.