Something a little... *different*

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen and other persons of taste and discernment. Is lockdown getting you down? Is the softening of regulations making you nervous (about your own choices, about other people's)? Have you basically done every variant on pasta and sauce you can fathom?

Well, let's try something a little more... bespoke. A little more... thrilling.

I mean, you may say all I've done here is asparagus and sauce, and a new cocktail recipe, but believe me, these are this week's thrills chez Haunton. And if it floats your boat, the asparagus recipe is positively filthy.

It's that time of asparagus season where if you've had decent supplies throughout (which I really have), you might be thinking of something a bit more complicated. You still want to eat it (the season ends quite shortly), but you've done the classics. Patricia and Kate  have both posted about the joys of asparagus cooking, and the many, many options there are for dishes. I did a not-a-risotto myself. But I do love just asparagus as the star of a recipe. It's just I've had it with butter or oil and herbs lots of times.

So it's time for this sauce from Nigel Slater: miso mustard mayonnaise with your Spargel.

The proportions want to be right for this, so go gently if you're not sure of the saltiness of your miso especially. You might even, as I did, overdo the miso and mustard, and find you have to flatten the seasoning by adding a smidge of double cream, which is the sort of scandalous content I didn't expect this blog to hold.

Phwoar. Look at that stalk

It's absolutely bloody delicious though. I think it's self-preservation that I've not made it so far this season, as I tend to get stuck on it once I have. My tastes get all exotic and I can't go vanilla.

Well, except for this little number. This is my cocktail of the week, courtesy of Jay Rayner for the NT at Home production of the week, This House (which I loved btw).

It's a delicious recipe, despite JR being completely unsound on gin in that video if you follow the link. Lemony, sweet, light... yum. Cocktail hour never tasted so seventies. Except I didn't have sugar syrup, and instead of just using sugar as suggested.... I used vanilla Monin syrup. And it was all wrong, and allllllll right.

Don't judge me. YMMV, and other defensive expressions.

But cheers, all the same. 7pm, see you then if you fancy some twitter company.