Asparagus (grown in Mexico) has been in the local stores for a few weeks now. I love it.
Ninkasi23 diaried asparagus not even a year ago, but I have different recipes.
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Asparagus has plenty of flavor and IMO simple approaches to cooking it are the best. Probably the most classic is poached, with Hollandaise sauce. One of the things I remember from the food chapter of my high school Spanish class is esparragos con mayonesa, which hardly needs translation; that would also start with plain poached asparagus. Spaniards have a strange folk saying that I found quoted but not explained in several places: “Go fry asparagus” means something like “bugger off”.
Ninkasi’s diary talks about roasting it; I love putting it across the bbq grill, brushed with olive oil, or stir-frying with ginger and soy sauce.
Here’s a main dish, a classic Chinese-style stir-fry. In spring and summer you’ll find something a LOT like this in many Chinese restaurants.
Chinese-style Beef and Asparagus
from food.com, serves 4. I think it’s funny they label it as “US” units, then give grams and milliliters, and a cut of beef I don’t see in my supermarket. Americans call “rump steak” round steak. I followed the suggestion of a commenter there and added green onions.
500 g rump steak
40 ml soy sauce
20 ml dry sherry
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 clove garlic, crushed
1 small red chile, seeded and chopped
12 spears fresh asparagus, trimmed and cut into 5 cm pieces
40 ml peanut oil
1 teaspoon cornstarch
- Trim the meat, and slice across the grain evenly into long, thin strips.
- Combine the soy, sherry, ginger, sesame oil, garlic and chilli; add the meat stirring to coat and leave to marinate for 30 minutes.
- Drain the meat, reserving the marinade.
- Heat 20ml of oil in a wok or heavy-based frying pan, add the asparagus and stir-fry for 2 minutes.
- Remove from the wok.
- Heat the remaining oil in the wok, cook the meat quickly in small batches over high heat until browned but not cooked through.
- Remove and drain on absorbent paper.
- Blend the cornstarch with the reserved marinade until smooth.
- Return asparagus and meat to wok with marinade mixture.
- Stir-fry over high heat until meat is cooked through and sauce has thickened.
- Serve at once.
Clik here to view.
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I don’t know yet what’s for dinner; the beef and asparagus was last night so I could take its picture. As you can see, I need to work on my food photography and on the presentation. The gravy is runny because I didn’t add the cornstarch to thicken it.
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What’s for dinner at your place? You could write it up for a future WFD! Message ninkasi23 if you can.