Casting Asparagus
On Your Cooking
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BK / JK
DISH: Making Asparagus Whee!
P’sparagus. That’s how the babies used to say it. Which is kind of funny given that asparagus lends some bodily fluids a certain telltale aroma. That odor is caused by the breakdown of asparagusic acid into sulfur and its byproducts, according to the Cleveland Clinic. What's interesting to note is that a) only 20-50 percent of us experience it, likely due to genetic differences and b) the asparagus after-effect can be detected upon release as fast as 15 minutes after eating it – and still occur for as long as 14 hours later. If you're really worried about it, you shouldn't be. Aspargusic acid is harmless and doesn't hurt your kidneys or urinary tract – and there's nothing you can do about it, anyway. Funny enough, asparagus is also a natural diuretic. So you might as well shrug it off and go ahead and enjoy some of those white or green stalks because, well, you've already guessed. It's asparagus season. In fact, the luxury vegetable from the Seventies is standard and largely affordable fresh fare this time of year. We love it. With apologies to our mom, that was not always the case. Back then we ate it because we had to, being from Gen #CleanYourPlate when it was not always so readily available. But asparagus is tough on a young person’s palate, which is not very developed to understand nuance. It’s tough on an older diner’s as well, given that it doesn’t pair well at all with most wines, and needs some good cover with a rich sauce to make a decent match. Regardless, while you can find it all year round, asparagus still reminds us of spring. Just last week Whole Foods had white asparagus side by side with green. Jen used to love when the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove, who had a German chef back in the early Aughts, celebrated the arrival of those ghostly spears, grown completely underground, with a week-long white asparagus-fest. Unfortunately, those days are long gone. And Betsy doesn’t care for either the price tag or what she calls the peculiar tang of it, reminding her as it does me of the canned variety we have all eaten (and strangely liked at the time). Asparagus can be pencil thin – our mom’s fave. Or it can be thick stalks, which have the advantage of being juicer but also woodier as they get further down. Either way, it is notoriously finicky in the fridge, so stand those spears upright in an inch of water. You might even trim them a bit first if they’re already dry. They are better used sooner than later. Like all vegetables, it’s great to remember they do not need much more than accurate cooking time to be delicious. And sometimes no cooking at all. Below is a list of super-simple asparagus guidelines for dishes that most anybody can make, and of course, eat. Feel free to riff or add your own. We’d love to hear from you. Roasted: Preheat the oven to minimum 400. Drizzle asparagus with a little olive oil. Cook until tender, about 5-8 minutes depending on size. Blanched: Cook in boiling salted water for 2-3 minutes. Otherwise cover with a bit of water and microwave for one minute at a time. Cooling them quickly is the key to avoid over-steaming. An ice bath is helpful to cool them down quickly and stop them from cooking. Or just eat them right there and then with butter. We're not saying we do that, but we're also not saying we don't. Shaved: Vegetable peel them or slice them thinly on the bias. Toss them with olive oil, lemon, and salt. Dipped: Use herby green goddess dressing or spiced ricotta. Try with blanched or slim raw asparagus. Grilled: Oiled, salted and flipped once or twice for grill marks. Topped with flaked Parmesan, bonito flakes, or nutritional yeast for umami flavor. Leftovers work in a panini with chicken and cheese just like the canned ones we flirted with in the Eighties. Pickled: When whole, hello bloody Marys! When chopped, mound on rounds of toasted French bread for bruschetta.
BK / JK
DISH: Spring Asparagus Risotto
When I started working on Martha Stewart’s SiriusXM channel I did a series of how-to lifestyle segments. With the birth of Sirius, it seemed odd, even to us early adopters, that we were offering verbal instruction complete with cooking food sound effects, as entertainment. Now, of course, food entertainment of all kinds – even just watching and listening to people eat – exists.
Nevertheless, we persevered and a constellation of chefs joined us. I took full advantage, learning a lot from those I dared to call. This is how I learned a risotto formula many years ago from the chef at my dearly missed Picholine.
Of course, a chef in a notable restaurant had a fridge full of flavorful and prepped bits and pieces to include. But even if you don’t, this celebration of spring requires very little on the cutting board and cooks in 30 minutes or less.
4-5 cups low- or no-sodium chicken broth
Large bunch asparagus
2-3 shallots (substitute small onion)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup Italian Arborio rice
½ cup white wine, not too sweet
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 cup Parmesan or similar hard Italian cheese plus extra for sprinkling
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring the broth to a boil and then keep it simmering.
Meanwhile, remove woody stems of asparagus and slice into small discs, but leave 1 inch tips intact. You could also peel the sturdier bottom of asparagus. Set aside.
Finely chop the shallots.
In a sauté pan, heat the olive oil over medium to low heat. Sauté shallots 3-5 minutes until soft, lower heat if browning. Season with salt. Add rice and stir for 1 minute. Add wine and raise heat to medium so it bubbles. When liquid is absorbed, start adding broth 2 ladlefuls at a time. Stir vigorously and let rice absorb the liquid.
Add more liquid as it gets absorbed about a cup at a time. The process should take 20-25 minutes. When the rice is nearly done, add the asparagus. Cook about 3 minutes until asparagus is cooked and rice is tender.
Remove from the heat. Stir in butter until melted, then cheese. Season with salt and pepper if desired.
*Note: Peas can be subbed for asparagus. Pancetta lovers can chop a couple of ounces, render them first in the pan until crisp, remove the meat and proceed with the recipe. If so, reduce the olive oil by a tablespoon. Then stir in the pancetta at the end.BK
TILL: On Growing (Or on Growing in the Garden)
To fence or not to fence. That is the question I am debating for the vegetable garden. Common sense says fence – the battle with my garden visitors has become epic. Financial sense is a little more complicated. Supply chain issues sparked by world events is driving costs much higher than when I conceived the project. And suddenly the place I think of as my "new" home has actually been our residence for four years. For most people, that does not register. For someone who has been averaging about seven years per house, I debate how long we will keep this charmer (and she is Charming with a capital “C”). So really the debate whittles down to spending and aesthetics. The means to rabbit-proofing already exist in my shed with a roll of wire fencing and metal posts. The fence I envision has a cost per post, cross pieces, and a cap shaped like an acorn to match the piece of a curved wall on the house itself. That same conversation plays in my mind when it comes to planning the planting. If I had committed to rhubarb and asparagus originally, I would be harvesting by now. Rhubarb can be a lifetime crop. Asparagus would definitely last our existence in the house plus some. It just needs a multi-year lead time. And more space than I would grant it so far. Each mature asparagus plant yields a minimum of one-half pound of asparagus. According to the University of New Hampshire, they need 18 inches between them with rows five feet apart. And plan on at least five plants per eater. When you start to calculate that, you realize that you have to pretty much dedicate a 5 x 8 raised bed entirely to a crop that will first yield only three years after planting. Regardless of house longevity, when I do the math I realize I’ve made at least one decision on my suburban crop this year. Despite the upscale price, this year rhubarb will join the rabbits in the garden. But asparagus might still be waiting in the wings, or wherever the missing parts of the supply chain are.
BK
DISH: Recap and Coming Soon
Betsy is in the digital and real world teaching culinary, mixology, and floral skills. Fully vaccinated and boosted, she's back to planning events, too, in Ohio, the Northeast, and now Southwest Florida. You can hire her by contacting her at betsy@theportablegarden.com.
Have you been watching Netflix's Bad Vegan about Sarma Melngailis? (Well, really, who hasn't?) Fun fact: Jen co-wrote the book Raw Food / Real World, the one that contains the recipes for Pure Food & Wine, the one that is splashed all over the documentary. No, you won't see her name on the cover. But it is on the inside, as invisible as the publisher could make it. (Squint hard and you can just about make it out!)
What's the lesson here? Royalties. Always get 'em. They pay off, and sometimes in very weird and mysterious ways almost two decades later (including via the many anecdotes about writing this book that Jen will dine out on for the rest of the year). But she will attest to this as well: These folks, regardless of what they allegedly did or didn't do to each other and other people, were way ahead of their time. We may all be making our own avocado-and-cacao smoothies, nut butters, overnight oats, and plant-based milks now – or at least enjoying them in restaurants and buying them in markets. But Sarma and her ex-partner Matthew Kenney made this stuff sexy way back in 2005. Back in the journalism world, Jen's article on the Miami Open and a profile of Miami City Ballet's retiring principal male lead dancer Rainer Krenstetter appeared in the spring issue of Lifestyles South Florida. Her Easter egg-within-an-Easter-egg recipe is out this week on the Cheryl's Cookies blog. Her piece on $1 per day breakfast for HuffPost is also coming out this week. If you're in the market for a vacuum sealer, she tested 10 of them for BobVila.com. And in creativity, poems are also out in the spring issues of Notre Dame Review, Terrain.org, and The Westchester Review. Plus, an interview about her and two other poets, "Jennifers of the 1970s," was published in the nation's pre-eminent poetry journal, The American Poetry Review. Coming Soon: Jen's testing stovetop cleaners, grill cleaners, indoor grills, smokeless grills, and coolers for BobVila.com. She has a takeout review of burgers for Miami New Times in the works. Her piece on a local Miami couple who run a hidden 10-seat Japanese restaurant and make a delicious Hokkaido cheese tart will appear in the summer travel issue of Culture cheese magazine. Poems will appear in Another Chicago Magazine, Crab Creek Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts (finalist in the 2021 Joy Harjo Poetry Contest), DIAGRAM, Escutcheon Review, Mom Egg Review, The Penn Review, Ruminate, Twelve Mile Review, and UCity Review, as well as couple of anthologies, one on the pandemic and another from Tolsun Books. You can hire her for writing by contacting her at kavetchnik@gmail.com. Visit her website at jkaretnick.com.
DISH: Poetry
Asparagus Announcing Fall
--from a dish by Chef Nir Zook
Choose your steps like cutlery.
In Tel Aviv, it is not construction
but archaelogical excavation
that requires the knowledge of barricades,
makeshift though they might be,
with plywood and plastic chicken wire
sprouting unexpectedly anywhere:
the cafe where you took your coffee,
the backyard where you wanted to plant
a pool, the sidewalk in front of your office.
Between Jaffa Bar and Cordelia, the space
being renovated for more tables now can’t
be fully scaled thanks to such discoveries,
though it’s difficult to see the value in such depths
despite the pots of wax burning like faith.
Outside this city built on so many other cities,
asparagus is coaxed to grow from desert crowns,
takes years to establish its perennial foot.
If you fill the bed too quickly, the roots
will suffocate, but do allow the ferns to brown,
feeding the spears that someday will poke
through the crisp, golden ground. Expect beetles, rust.
Forbid yourself a knife. Elsewhere, asparagus
heralds spring, but at this restaurant, for your sake,
seared tines of khaki green stretch and splay
like a forgotten rake over a bed of crushed
yellow lentils, so many leaves pushed
into a pile where only visitors might think to play.JK
You can find this and other food-and-drink poems in Brie Season (Kelsay Books, 2014).
