Tag: Asparagus

Spring Vegetable Pizza

Spring Veggie Pizza

Spring Veggie Pizza

A couple of weeks ago, Jonah made us the loveliest picnic. We have a beautiful park a few blocks from our house, and on one of the first nice days, he decided to make us a picnic and we’d take it down to the park that looks over the river and the west hills of Portland to watch the sun set. I scored a good one, huh? So, really, he made this spring veggie pizza, but I’m going to post it because he’s already way behind on his posts. Jonah is a big fan of Martha, so of course he found this pizza on her website. We bought the pizza dough at our local grocery store, and he adapted a bit in terms of cheese (the recipe called for gruyere, but he used fontina…we think).

Spring Vegetable Pizza

Ingredients

1 jar (12 ounces) marinated artichoke hearts, drained (reserve the marinade!), hearts quartered if whole
1 bunch asparagus (1 pound), trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces, and halved lengthwise if thick
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 pound pizza dough, thawed if frozen and divided in half
salt and pepper
7 ounces Fontina cheese, grated (3 cups)
7-10 slices of prosciutto (optional, but suggested)

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees, and put the racks in the upper and lower thirds of the oven. In a bowl, combine the artichoke hearts, asparagus, and tomatoes. Put one of the halves of the dough on a piece of parchment paper and brush it with the artichoke heart marinade. Now roll it out to about a 14-inch long oval, and transfer it (with the parchment underneath) to a rimmed baking sheet). Put half of the veggies on the rolled-out dough, leaving a border of about an inch. Brush the border again with the marinade and sprinkle the pizza with salt and pepper. Repeat to make another pizza. Bake them for 10 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through. After baking for 10 minutes, sprinkle the cheese over the pizzas and bake until the crust is golden at the edges and the cheese is nice and melty, about 3-5 minutes. Cut into pieces and voila! Pizza!

If you want prosciutto (this makes a great vegetarian meal without it), tear it into smaller pieces and drape it over the pizza. It makes for a nice salty addition.

Asparagus Salad with Prosciutto and Poached Eggs

Asparagus salad with croutons, prosciutto, and poached eggs

Asparagus salad with croutons, prosciutto, and poached eggs
Asparagus salad with croutons, prosciutto, and poached eggs

In the Ad Hoc cookbook (by Thomas Keller), there’s this delicious looking asparagus salad with croutons, prosciutto, and poached eggs. Sounds good, right? I don’t know about you, but I love all of those things. Jonah and I were in the mood for a light dinner, so we decided to make it the other night. The only problem? Neither of us had ever poached an egg before. It’s one of those things, like baking with yeast, that scared me even though it’s probably not actually that hard.

But I did it! And you can do it! I did! My first attempt was much more successful than my second attempt. After having some little egg bits in the pot from the first egg and then swishing it all around to create my whirlpool, the visibility was not so good, so I had trouble telling where my egg was in it’s cooking process. And then it broke when I removed it. Don’t worry, I made Jonah eat that one. Hahaha.

Fall Salad with Poached Eggs, Asparagus, and Proscuitto

Ingredients

2 eggs
1 bunch asparagus
olive oil
salt
8 slices of prosciutto
Croutons (fresh! our grocery store has some really delicious ones made in house. please don’t buy those gross ones in the resealable bags. blech.)
balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper for finishing

Instructions

Poached eggs

Put a few inches of water in it plus a dash of vinegar (white distilled, because that was the only kind I had that seemed reasonable), and started heating it. The important thing (it would seem, from my research) is to have the water hot enough but not so hot that it’s boiling or even simmering. Got that? No bubbles breaking the surface. While your water is heating, break your egg into a small bowl or ramekin. It’s good to not break the egg directly into the water because it gives you a little more control.

When the water is hot enough, take a wooden spoon or spatula (I would advise a spatula… I liked it better for helping the egg along later) and stir it so that it creates a nice little whirlpool. Pour your egg gently into the middle of the whirlpool. It will look, for a moment, like you’ve done something horribly wrong and this will never work and you’ll be asking yourself why you even tried in the first place. But just wait! After the egg has been in the water for about 30 seconds or so, you can start to help it along by nudging it with your spatula, pushing the bits together. After a minute or so, you may notice that your egg has stuck to the bottom of your pan. Gently slide your spatula underneath it to get it unstuck. I also liked to roll my egg over because the bottom of the pot is hotter (duh) and it helped it to cook a little more evenly. Now, after about 3-5 minutes, you should be done! Remove the egg with a slotted spoon and put it in one of 3 places: 1) an ice bath, and then reheat it in the pot of water when you’re ready to serve (Thomas Keller). 2) on a paper towel to dry a little bit (Smitten Kitchen). 3) If you are out of paper towels and don’t feel like preparing an ice bath and then reheating your eggs, a lint-free dishtowel (me).

Fall Salad

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Trim your asparagus, put on a baking sheet, and toss with olive oil and salt. Put it in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the asparagus is cooked to your liking (some people like it crunchy, some people like it soft). Note: Thomas Keller wanted us to grill our asparagus, but we don’t have a grill. Roasting it is a wonderful and winter-friendly alternative.

On a plate, arrange your asparagus, eggs, prosciutto, and croutons. Season to taste with salt and pepper and drizzle with oil and vinegar.

This meal was delicious and light. I can see it being lovely for a summer dinner party. It’s fairly easy too, once you get the whole egg poaching thing down (I’m still working on that part). Enjoy!

Soy Glazed Salmon and Asparagus with Miso

Soy Glazed Salmon and Asparagus with Miso

Soy Glazed Salmon and Asparagus with Miso
Soy Glazed Salmon and Asparagus with Miso

Soy Glazed Salmon and Asparagus with Miso

The other day Jonah and I were feeling up to cooking a big fancy meal. I picked the menu: Soy Glazed Salmon, Eggplant with Miso, served with rice. We got to the store and they didn’t have eggplant though, so I picked up some asparagus instead. Not sure why. But it was the right decision. This salmon is so unbelievably easy. Boil some delicious stuff in a put, put it on a hunk of fish, cook it, put on more stuff, and then eat it. Oh my goodness.

While Jonah was making the salmon, I had to find a new recipe. Lucky for me, I types in “asparagus with miso” and I quickly found a delicious recipe on…Oprah.com. I adjusted ingredients based on what we had as well as some of the eggplant recipes I’d read.

This meal was honestly one of the easiest, most delicious meals I’ve had. I have a tendency when I cook fish to put too much sauce or whatever on it so that it doesn’t really tasted like fish anymore. This salmon still tasted like salmon, but with a little kick of salty and sweet, it was perfect. And the asparagus had little charred bits (which I love) and was a little sweet, a little spicy, and a little tart. They tasted delicious together too. I highly recommend cooking this meal when you want to impress but don’t want to do too much work.

Soy Glazed Salmon with Miso Asparagus

Ingredients

Soy Glazed Salmon

1 lb salmon
1/8 cup soy sauce
1/8 cup maple syrup

Miso Asparagus

1/8 cup miso paste
1-2 clove garlic , minced
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger (I didn’t have fresh ginger, so I used about half a teaspoon of powdered ginger, I’m sure more than that would be good too)
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice
1 pinch red pepper flakes
1/2 tablespoon sugar (to make it caramelize a little bit)
1 tablespoon mirin
3/4 pounds asparagus , bottoms trimmed
1/2 tablespoon olive oil
Pinch of salt

Instructions

Soy Glazed Salmon

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. The recipe (from the Gourmet Today cookbook which we got on sale at Powell’s for $15) says to line a broiler pan with foil and then oil the broiler rack. We don’t have those things, so we just used an oiled pyrex baking dish, which worked just fine.

Bring the soy sauce and maple syrup to a boil in a small saucepan over medium heat, uncovered, and boil until it reduces to a little more than half (of what you originally had). Put salmon skin-side-down in the dish or on the pan or whatever and pat dry. Set some of the glaze aside for later, and brush the salmon generously with the remaining glaze. Let stand for 5 minutes, then brush again with glaze. Roast the salmon for 10 minutes in the oven. Turn on broiler, brush salmon with glaze again and broil close to the heat (think 6 inches or so, no need to be terribly exact) until cooked through, 3-5 minutes. Once you take the salmon out of the oven, you can brush on the remaining glaze.

Miso Asparagus

Preheat broiler. In a small bowl, combine all ingredients EXCEPT asparagus, olive oil, and salt. Stir well and set aside. On a baking sheet, toss asparagus with olive oil and salt. Cook close to heat (about 6 inches) for about 3 minutes (if you like softer asparagus, like me, cook for 4 minutes), then remove from oven. Spread miso mixture over the asparagus and place back under broiler for 3-5 minutes.