Farm to Table: Asparagus

Spring time calls for fresh asparagus! To create contrast with our pink Beet Martini, we cooked all things asparagus green. Over the weekend we explored different ways to eat asparagus beyond roasting or sautéing.

We got our asparagus from Damn Good Honey Farm!

On the menu for our asparagus feast:

Asparagus and Spinach Soup

Roasted Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus 

Shaved Asparagus Arugula Salad

Asparagus and Scallop Ceviche

With all of these starters we made an entire meal!

Asparagus and Spinach Soup

For this recipe I followed a cookbook recipe my family has been using every Easter, Great Good Food by Julee Rosso. I doubled her recipe and replaced the chicken stock for vegetable stock. It’s called a creamy soup but there’s no cream!  The creamy viscosity comes from the spinach so don’t be shy on adding a bit more than it calls for.

Ingredients

• Asparagus around 2 pounds
• 8 cups of vegetable broth (can use chicken too)
• 3 cups of packed spinach
• 1 cup of minced dill
• Pinch of cayenne
• Pinch of ground nutmeg

Directions

Chop the asparagus into 1 inch pieces and put them into two separate bowls, one with the stalks and one with the heads. I love working with asparagus because I can just break them with my hands.

Then I chopped the dill and eyeballed the spinach. While this is happening I heated up the vegetable broth and added the asparagus stalks in.

Once the broth came to a boil I turned it to simmer and covered the pot for 25 min. After 25 minutes I removed the lid and added the remaining ingredients except for the asparagus heads.

I mixed the ingredients and let them simmer for 5 minutes before removing the pot from the heat. After removing the bowl from the heat I blended the soup!

This part of the process is the perfect time to test the “creamy” consistency, if it feels too watery, add more spinach and blend! Finally, add the asparagus heads and simmer for around 5 minutes and serve! I forgot to take a picture before I ate it since I was so hungry, but I managed to remember after a few spoonfuls.

Roasted Prosciutto Wrapped Asparagus 

This recipe is a quick and easy recipe but a twist on your classic roasted asparagus. We adapted a recipe from Joanne of fifteen spatulas. We got our prosciutto and parmesan from Mill & Main. We’re excited for their new restaurant to open soon which our architecture team, Studio MM, helped design! We also stopped by Mill & Main during our Weekend in Accord blog post.

Ingredients

• A few asparagus stalks
• Prosciutto
• Parmesan

Directions

First, make sure to wash your asparagus and remove the hard base.  Make sure you have equal strips of prosciutto to asparagus. Line the prosciutto flat and grate some cheese on top

Next, roll the prosciutto around the asparagus, and go at an angle so that the prosciutto covers the entire stalk.

Then place them on a baking sheet and sprinkle a bit more cheese on top before roasting.

Read thru the next three recipes to see the result!

Shaved Asparagus Arugula Salad

For this recipe, instead of having whole or chopped asparagus, we shaved it! By shaving it, the asparagus is easier to eat raw and pairs really well in salads. We based our salad off of Maria Lichty’s recipe.

Ingredients

• Asparagus (shaved)
• Arugula
• Parmesan (other alternatives are Asiago or Feta)
• Avocado
• Olive Oil
• Lemon Juice
• (the recipe also called for pistachios but I didn’t have any on hand – it sounds like a delicious addition though!)

Directions

First, shave the asparagus and place them in a bowl.

Next we shaved the cheese and diced up an avocado and added them in with the asparagus. Add arugula, drizzle olive oil, lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste!

Mix the ingredients up and serve!

Asparagus and Scallop Ceviche

We are really crossing off all of the diets – vegan, vegetarian, meat-lovers…and now for our pescatarians we have a ceviche recipe! For this recipe we used the discards from the shaved asparagus salad and added in some cubed raw scallops we purchased from Montauk Catch Club.

Ingredients

• Asparagus (duh!)
• scallops
• olive oil
• lemon (or lime)

Directions

Since this was the easy home stretch, we just used all of the asparagus scraps, but if you’re making this from the start just thinly chop some asparagus. Then cut your scallop into chunks and marinate the two in olive oil and lemon juice.

Now for the final products…

bon appetit!