Asparagus Salad

  

I keep making this salad. It has become a metaphor for loving being in the kitchen: flavors and aromas, fresh ingredients, nourishment, anticipation, pleasant surprise. I began making it when it still seemed safe to go somewhere without social distancing or wearing a mask, and I found some of the best asparagus I’ve ever eaten at Trader Joe’s on my way back from a short vacation. It started out as a recipe fantasy in Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden, and, now that really great asparagus is in my farmer’s market, it has become a way of life.

Six Seasons is a big, bold, flavor-promoting recipe collection. It celebrates the absolute sacredness of freshness and seasonality in produce, but also boosts everything with multiple layers of enhancing flavors – sometimes lots of them, often in combinations that I’m not sure about, always at least one more that I ever thought anyone would slip in. McFadden may be a sorcerer.

 

I have to admit that I’ve been intimidated by this kind of cooking. I don’t really have simple taste, but I do have a “simple” budget and not a lot of time. I would page through this type of cookbook, dreaming and drooling, but ultimately getting a little discouraged by ingredient lists that looked hard to acquire, a little weird, or just plain exhausting.

I set aside plenty of time to work on this recipe the first time I made it. I properly sliced the raw asparagus. I combined the breadcrumbs, Parmesan, walnuts, chile, black pepper, and lemon zest. And then I sniffed the bowl. I’m not sure what made me do it, but there was no going back. There will never be any going back. The fragrance of lemon and toasted nuts, the vaporous umami of the Parmesan (I mean, who knew it was safe to smell cheese?) along with toastiness from the whole grain, homemade breadcrumbs and punches of spice from the chile and black pepper – Alchemy. A whole greater than the sum of its parts. I can’t say enough.

 

The lesson of this dish is that bold layers of big flavor, properly and appropriately applied, can even further enhance already great, fresh ingredients, creating something magically spectacular. This salad is also a full celebration of what it means to enjoy food. It’s a pleasure to make with its meditative slicing and wonderful fragrances. And it’s so incredibly, wonderfully, super-naturally delicious. This is what we food-lovers step into the kitchen for.

I’m going to keep making this salad.

Asparagus Salad with Walnuts, Breadcrumbs, and Herbs

Adapted from Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden

There’s lots of room to adjust seasonings, oil, and lemon to taste in this recipe. Taste as you go and make it your own. It is best while the breadcrumbs are still crisp, but it’s still great once they’ve softened having soaked up lemon and olive oil.

1/3 cup breadcrumbs, preferably coarse, crunchy, and whole grain

½ cup freshly shredded or grated Parmesan cheese

½ cup toasted walnuts or pecans, chopped

Grated zest of 1 lemon

½ teaspoon coarse salt, plus more to taste

About ¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more to taste

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes, or more or less to taste

1 pound asparagus, tough ends removed

¼ cup freshly squeezed lemon juice, or more to taste

¼ cup fresh mint or parsley leaves, or a combination

¼ cup extra-virgin olive oil, or a good quality lemon-infused olive oil, plus more to taste

1. In a large bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, Parmesan, walnuts or pecans, lemon zest, salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper flakes. Toss them together, and then STOP. Put your face over the bowl and sniff. Sniff a few more times. Inhale. That’s what you’re here for!

2. Thinly slice the asparagus on a sharp angle. Add to the mixture in the bowl.

3. Pour in the lemon juice and add the mint and/or parsley. Toss everything together. You can taste at this point for salt, spice, and lemon and adjust as you please.

4. Pour over the olive oil and toss everything together. Taste again and adjust as needed.

5. Make this dish multiple times and try out different ratios of salt, oil, lemon and herbs. Make I again and again until it is your own, or until asparagus is out of season in your area.

Makes 4-6 side-dish servings (Although I’m perfectly satisfied to have it as a main dish.)

Other recipes like this one: Fresh Peas and Mint; Brown and Wild Rice Salad with Asparagus and Pea; Apple Salad with Lime Juice, Walnuts, and Cheese

One Year Ago: Strawberry Sour Cream Pound Cake

Back to....Something

Hello. How are you? I am fine.

Yeah, I know. Nobody is fine right now. I guess what I mean to say is that I am back – I hope – and I have no excuse for being away. Not an exciting excuse anyway. Several months ago, I just stopped being able to find time to muck about in my insignificant little web space.

And then. Some things happened. Pandemic. Civil Rights Crisis. Hybrid Civil War.

How frivolous is a cooking blog now? We all have more serious, more relevant, more urgent work to do and matters to consider.

However.

We choose which human constructs to embrace every minute: Faith, Reason, Justice, Oppression, Equanimity, Retaliation, Protest, Acceptance…. Why not, for part of the day, choose a place to Rest, Enjoy, Learn….Indulge? Is that not also part of what it means to be human?

I manage a kitchen in an Assisted Living and Extended Healthcare (a.k.a. nursing home) Community. So far, we have kept COVID-19 out of our buildings, in which reside people who are most vulnerable to the serious symptoms of the disease. Institutions nearby (just a few blocks away) have been less fortunate.

We have taken many, many measures of varying extremity to keep our residents safe. All of our communal dining spaces are closed and we deliver meals to resident rooms and apartments. No non-essential people are allowed in the building (including visitors). The place smells of disinfectants. We all wear masks and face shields. Employees are requested to wear masks whenever we are in contact with the rest of the world and to limit our travel. We have participated in one wave of mass testing (no positive tests!!). It goes on like that. There’s no end in sight.

Among all of the preventative and precautionary measures we are taking, something is working. It may be one thing and it may be all of the things. I’m not willing to take away any of the measures currently in place, no matter how inconvenient they may be, to test which is most important. Lives in my care are literally at stake.

I also live in the state in which George Floyd was killed by police. There is stress. There is anxiety, uncertainty, insomnia, exhaustion, frustration, fear, anger. This is life now, at The Day Job and outside of it. I do not want to stop doing anything that gives me a reason to carry on. I’m not willing to give up on what matters, what I enjoy, what keeps me sane. What keeps me human. I’m not willing to stop any precautions against inhumanity.

Like:

**Black Lives Matter (Do not argue. Your arguments are ignorant at best. Unfollow if necessary.)

**The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty. I read this a long time ago, but I recommend reading it now to better understand the journey of African Americans in this country and the racism still inherent in our culture. It might make you uncomfortable. It should make you uncomfortable. Read. This. Book.

**Other reading. I’ve read and LOVED the following novels recently: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow. The Bone Season, The Mime Order, and The Song Rising (a trilogy) by Samantha Shannon. The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern.

I’m also currently reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Harari. This is one of those books that changes your understanding of the world and snaps your vision of everything into a new level of clarity.

** “I Love Everything”, Patton Oswalt’s latest stand-up comedy special on Netflix. Truly very, very funny, but also like a visit with a friend when I couldn’t visit friends, a chat about the absurdities of life, love, and middle-age.

** “The Splendid Table”. When it comes to feeling like I’m chatting with friends when I can’t, this show is quintessential.

**Gardening. Planting food is a therapeutic exercise in optimism. I planted lots of herbs, lettuces, something like 8 different kinds of tomato plants, winter squash, chile peppers, yellow summer squash, and, of course, zucchini. If civilization does collapse, I will likely still have my zucchini. There’s also rhubarb, of course.

**Baking bread. I’m not always thrilled when something I love becomes trendy, but I’m ecstatic that so many people are diving into baking and bread baking in particular. See, it really is great! In addition to Baguettes, Light Wheat Baguettes, and sandwich loaves like this one and this one, I’ve been trying loaves from my many, many cookbooks. I hope to talk about some of these in the upcoming months.

**So many other recipes! I’ve got a batch of this liqueur steeping! These bars and these scones and these scones are great! A rhubarb version of this cake was delicious! Strawberry-rhubarb and apricot jams! Homemade pizza every Saturday! These peanut butter cookies (with chocolate chips instead of peanut butter cups) just for fun! This cake and these brownies for an informal gathering with friends (social distancing observed)! Soup Beans with beans from Rancho Gordo! Plus I’ve discovered gnocchi, red beans and rice, and the best asparagus salad (in Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden)!

 

This space has almost always been about the food: ingredients, recipes, processes, flavors, techniques, variations, traditions, enjoyment. Cooking, baking, assembling a salad, exploring molecular gastronomy, these activities make us human, help us define ourselves, for better or for worse. These activities, along with reading lots of books, gardening, laughing along with relatable comedy, creating art, and getting absorbed in another human’s art are all helping us to stay grounded, sane, civilized. I for one am not going to stop doing them, talking about them, reporting on them, sharing them. The alternative is too grim to contemplate.

I hope you’ll come along.