JULIE'S ASPARAGUS
- 1 pound fresh asparagus
- 2 Tbs butter
- Salt & black pepper to taste
- Rinse & drain the asparagus, and snap off the tough ends where they break naturally (This was news to me - until now, I had always arbitrarily picked a place to trim asparagus ends with a knife. I always worried that I was tossing out perfectly good asparagus parts, and I inevitably bit into some pieces and realized I had left the tough part still on. This "breaking" tactic worked smashingly).
- Arrange the spears in a glass casserole dish in 1 or 2 layers.
- Melt the butter and drizzle over the asparagus.
- Season with salt & pepper to taste (For me, this meant about 1/2 tsp of kosher salt and a very generous downpour of freshly coarse-ground black pepper).
- Cover the dish snugly with aluminum foil.
- Bake at 450 degrees for about 15 minutes.
For our main dish, because The Carnivore cannot live on asparagus alone, I made Yankee Corn Chowder, another great recipe from my America's Bounty cookbook, one of Big Mama's best yard-sale finds yet.
YANKEE CORN CHOWDER
- 2 cups water
- 1/2 cup chopped onion (I used red onion)
- 1/2 cup russet potato, peeled and diced (I used new red potatoes and I vehemently disagree with the whole peeling thing - I left the peels on and didn't regret it)
- 1/2 cup chopped celery, with some leaves (whatever! I didn't leave any leaves on, and I'm glad of it - for what will seem to be a very obvious reason when you find out what I did with the parsley)
- 1/4 cup parsley, chopped (This is a very important step. I got so hung up on the odd proportions of this dish - after all, the recipe called for half as much parsely as it did onion or potato - that I got completely distracted by the mounting PILE of parsley as I measured it out. Luckily, of course, I had plenty of fresh parsley due to the whole mistaken cilantro debacle from last weekend, but this still seemed ridiculous. Regardless, I ended up omitting the "chopped" instruction and threw the parsley into the stockpot without first doing the obvious. Suffice to say The Carnivore and I both needed dental floss after dinner.)
- 2 cups milk
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 15-0z can corn, drained
- In a medium saucepan, bring water to a boil.
- Cook onion, potato, celery, and CHOPPED parsley for 15 minutes or until tender.
- Add milk and salt and heat just to boiling.
- Stir in corn and heat again, stirring.
Even with the large grass-like clumps of parsley, the soup was still very tasty for something with such simple flavors. I will definately make this again, especially since it is such a quick dish to put together and uses ingredients I keep on hand anyway, but next time I will use more onion, and I will pummel the parsley into submission before tossing it into the pot.
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