The many ways of asparagus

I’ve been thinking about writing this blog off and on for a while now, as I love asparagus. One of the thoughts that popped into my head just as lockdown was looming was ‘But will we still be able to get asparagus?’ As you may guess from this, asparagus is important. This is partly just because I like the taste, and partly because the English asparagus season is so short. It’s also to do with its timing. We try to eat mainly locally and seasonally, buying most of our fresh food from the local farmer’s market, which I’ve mentioned here a lot. This started out as an environmental thing, but I also like the intellectual challenge aspect of it: what’s in season? What can I make with it? It means you can’t cook the same thing, week in, week out, all year round. But it does get to be more of a challenge in around February and March, in what’s known as the ‘Hungry Gap’, between the end of the winter root crops and the start of fresh green spring things.


Asparagus heralds the end of that, and the promise of good times and abundance ahead, so it felt particularly important this year. Fortunately, the above mentioned farmer’s market, The Goods Shed, has been able to deliver (literally) on the asparagus, even in these strange times. With the season almost over, I thought I’d on take on Melinda’s something old, something new challenge and apply it to this year’s asparagus.


Something Old: Asparagus pizza


One of the first recipes that I remember cooking asparagus for was pizza, before we even moved to Canterbury and embarked on our seasonal eating quest. We lived elsewhere in Kent, and had asparagus from a local farm shop, and saw as asparagus pizza recipe Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, when he still used to write a column in the Weekend Guardian. This version is also a Hugh recipe, although not the original one I made, which I think featured ham and goat’s cheese. This is maybe more conventional, in that it’s topped with mozzarella. It’s a pizza bianca, meaning no tomato sauce, so it’s just onions, asparagus and mozzarella. The onions are fried until soft before they go on the pizza base (same dough as I use for flat breads, recipe in a previous post), followed by the asparagus and the cheese. Cook in a hot oven for ten minutes.

Pizza: snatched picture as husband was hungry...

Something New: Asparagus tart with ricotta, miso and black garlic


This is from Ottolenghi (who else?). I made this for the first time this year, after finding the recipe in my file of cuttings – I’d actually kept the page for the recipe on the other side, but as I actually had all of the ingredients for this, it felt like fate (I’d bought the ricotta for another Ottolenghi thing, pea fritters, which I think someone else has already written about) – if you have all the ingredients for an Ottolenghi recipe, especially in lockdown, you pretty much have to try it.

I actually remembered to take a process shot! Tart ready to go in the oven.

The recipe in question is here. I sliced the asparagus in half, as he specifies fine, and mine was quite think. I wasn’t sure how this would work out, but we both really enjoyed it, and it wasn’t overly complicated to make, although blending the black garlic dressing was fiddly.

My half of the finished article, being served with creamed chard.

Something borrowed: roast asparagus with vinaigrette

I’m going to class this recipe as borrowed, in the sense that I don’t actually look at the recipe anymore, I just make it, so I’m not sure if what I make bears much resemblance to the original anymore. I found this in a newsletter from our farmer’s market, I can’t remember who they credited to. It’s very simple, but one of my favourite ways to eat asparagus. Put asparagus on baking tray, drizzle with olive oil, but in oven for about 10 minutes (depending on how thick your asparagus is)at about 200C (180 fan, don’t know about gas, sorry), shaking it half way through if you remember/can be bothered (does make for more even cooking, but not a huge difference). Meanwhile mix roughly equal amount of white wine vinegar and olive oil (I tend to have slightly more oil and slightly less vinegar) with a smidge of mustard, according to taste. I like wholegrain best, but you can use pretty much any type. You could also vary the type of vinegar, although I don’t think I ever have (I have now started wondering about red wine vinegar; I must try that).


Something blue: Asparagus and blue cheese risotto with hazelnuts


Ok, I’m probably cheating slightly with this one, as it wasn’t really blue by the time I ate it, but I reckon it’s close enough. The recipe is here. It's a fairly standard risotto approach, but uses only water instead of stock, so the other flavours really stand out. This is one of those recipes I now come back to every asparagus season. I actually made it with Cashel Blue cheese instead of gorgonzola, which gives a slighter stiffer texture than gorgonzola would, but not very much. The farmer’s market cheese stall only sells UK cheeses, they suggested Cashel as a gorgonzola substitute. It’s a nice cheese in its own right – worth looking out for.

I finally made a risotto!

I am now at the point in asparagus season where I try to decide which of these I repeat before the supply runs out...