Hello and welcome back to The Stone Soup Cook–I’m so glad you’re here!
This week, I am celebrating an anniversary–this week last year, I started publishing The Stone Soup Cook! I have had a ball creating content, recipes, cooking and sharing a little philosophy on food with you. Thanks for finding time to hang out with me.
Now on with the show–
To celebrate, I couldn’t think of a better food to feature than my hands down favorite vegetable, asparagus:
If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you know that I LOVE asparagus. On New Year’s Day, I start thinking about the beginning of a new asparagus season–no, really, I do. Matt, my asparagus guy at the farmer’s market, starts giving me updates on his asparagus crop a couple of weeks before he brings in his first offerings.
This year, he brought in the new crop starting in early February. He knows me really well, and had put a half a dozen bundles of the new crop aside for me. The brand new asparagus spears were gnarled and twisted and of all different sizes. I didn’t care. I eagerly grabbed them up, my hands and heart trembling with excitement. I took them home and I steamed a pile of them up that morning for breakfast. The brand new spears were sweet and tender and delicate. Mr. Stone Soup and I ate like wolves. That evening, I made another pile of them and we savored them with a little vinaigrette.
My favorite way to prepare asparagus is simply steamed for a few minutes–no salt, no butter, no lemon, no nothing–just a little steam to soften them. But, I also love them in soups, with ham, Hollandaise sauce, in a casserole, with a simple vinaigrette, on pizza—you get it–pretty much any way I can get them in my mouth is good for me.
I’m planning to feature asparagus for more than one week here at The Stone Soup Cook just because I’ve got lots of recipes for asparagus and I’m eager to share some new ones that I’ve been working on.
This week, I’m going to kick off asparagus tide by featuring several sauces to pair with asparagus. While delicious served plain, asparagus are versatile enough to pair beautifully with a basic vinaigrette, an aioli, a lemon/butter/dill sauce, and the like. Over the next few days, I’ll share recipes and more thoughts on this most seductive of vegetables.
The first sauce I’ll share is the basic vinaigrette:
In upcoming posts, I’ll share more sauces to compliment asparagus, we’ll talk about nutrition, skinny vs. colossal asparagus, to peel or not to peel, to snap, and so on. There’s a lot to talk about and I’m very excited about getting asparagus week(s) started! Tune in tomorrow to see my recipe for a simple and tasty aioli!
Until then
Peace, love and good food,
Keri
p.s. the original artwork in the feature photo is mine–for I so loved the asparagus that I painted them with reckless abandon!
