Making the mashed potatoes was a pleasure, as it always is, and now that I have a ricer, making hummus-smooth mashed potatoes is as easy as pie. But the asparagus purée was another story. First, the green color of the purée is just weird, and even though the purée actually tastes pretty good (it's not so different from cream-of-asparagus soup), I ended up with a lot of fibrous material that had to be strained out even after a longish time in the blender. This actually felt like a waste to me: when you eat pan-fried asparagus, fiber is part of the experience, and it's one of the things making asparagus so healthy!
Upshot: I'm thinking I might reserve the purée as a soup (after tweaking it a bit) and use a standard brown sauce for the main dish instead. This'll work better with sauces like chimichurri, anyway: asparagus purée on the plate would have meant a green-on-green color scheme once the chimichurri entered the picture.
Since I have to cook down bacon for my bacon crumbles, I can use the bacon drippings to make a pan sauce. Problem solved!
I've never done an asparagus purée, and honestly when I first read that you were planning on doing it I thought it sounded a bit weird. But I didn't say anything because I generally like to try things before I pass judgment. But cream-of-asparagus soup sounds good, so I think we'll be OK. You're still planning on having the asparagus spears, right?
ReplyDeleteYes. Britney remains on the menu.
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