Asparagus! 2260I know I've seen asparagus from Mexico around here too this time of year, maybe that's where my latest batches came from. In summer...
You must live in a slightly lower cost area... asparagus was on sale here at Safeway last week for $1.39 a pound (Mid Atlantic). Back up to the normal outrageous price this week.
I made a few things out of it, including shirred eggs with asparagus and browned butter. But the big thing last night was cream of asparagus soup, by a "make it up as I go" recipe. Similar to Wayne's recipe though.
I did do a couple of things differently, which might be of interest to some. I have a hard time tossing the tough lower ends of the stalks, no matter what I'm using the asparagus for. A couple of years ago I decided to accumulate them for asparagus soup. So every time I make something with asparagus, the tough lower ends get tossed into a bag in the freezer. When I have enough saved up, I also buy a new fresh batch and make soup.
The tough lower parts go into the pot first with the chicken stock, coarsely chopped. After simmering about 15 minutes, I go through them with the stick blender. After simmering 30 minutes total, this portion goes through the food mill, removing all the fibrous material.
Asparagus! 2262Maybe the reason I am seeing the price differences between Safeways is this area might be a bit more "complex" than where you...
Asparagus! 2263biig I'm lucky to have five supermarkets within a mile from my house. Both of the Aldis near me are a bit of a...
The middle third (also coarsely chopped) get steamed in the microwave. These get added to the above liquid. I go through it again with the stick blender. This is similar to Wayne's use of the blender on the middle third. The asparagus tops then go in whole.
The other different thing I did this time was fry up a couple of ounces of chopped salt pork. The cracklings from that also went into the soup when the middle thirds of the asparagus did, so they also got pureed into oblivion with the stick blender. Using the salt pork, obviously I didn't add any salt to the soup (and I used low salt chicken stock). The fat from the salt pork went in also, but that wasn't much as I used quite lean salt pork.
I know it's a bit more work to use the lower ends of the asparagus, but I am extracting quite a bit of flavor from them. I made my soup using 6 cups of chicken stock, and perhaps 3 pounds of asparagus total. I guess proportionally my soup had significantly more asparagus in it than Wayne's recipe.
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