Partners in cooking

Tags

asparagus, bacon, grilled chicken, postaday2016

Today my husband and I partnered up in cooking, he was outside grilling chicken cutlets and I was inside cooking up the asparagus. I think you can see from the picture that we got three varieties of asparagus, the white, green and dark red, we wanted to do a tasting comparison. After I peeled the green and red asparagus, I left the white as they were, I plunged them in heavily salted boiling water and once they came back to the boil, I left them for about ten minutes.  In the meantime, I made a Dijon mustard vinaigrette to serve with the asparagus, I also used the vinaigrette to dip the grilled chicken in for some added zip. My husband did an excellent job grilling the chicken, the cutlets were tender and juicy with just a hint of char, my favorite part. Did I mention there was bacon? My husband cooked the bacon on the grill after the cutlets were done, wow, grilled bacon is a special kind of delicious, trust me.

If you look closely at the first picture, you’ll see a tiny bit of Jack in the lower right hand corner, he was circling around us in the kitchen, hoping beyond hope for a dropped morsel. He was out of luck, lol.

Trying to fix asparagus soup

Tags

asparagus, postaday2016, soup

My husband was in the mood for asparagus soup, I had never made it before, but it was only recently that we had both tasted an excellent asparagus soup at, I forget which restaurant, apparently my husband hadn’t forgotten about the soup though where we ate it didn’t rate staying in the memory banks, lol. I searched for recipes and from what I read, it was very straightforward and simple; a pound of asparagus, onions, chicken stock and cream as an option. We had four bunches of asparagus, I chopped two onions, sautéed them, I peeled the asparagus to get rid of the tough skin, chopped them into one inch pieces and sautéed them with the onions and then simmered it with chicken stock. When the asparagus was tender, I used my stick mixer and puréed the soup, when I tasted the asparagus soup, I was expecting a fresh, spring taste, but it wasn’t there. I asked my husband to taste and asked him what he thought it needed. He immediately came up with an answer, broccoli and spinach,  both were available in our freezer. We have the Ninja blender that can pulverize anything and it rendered the frozen broccoli and spinach liquid in no time, he added the purée to the asparagus soup and though the soup didn’t taste like what we had at that restaurant, it tasted a whole lot better and looked more appetizing to boot.

Cooking as a team can be much more effective at times than cooking solo, I was lagging creatively in that moment and my husband jumped in to the soup’s rescue, lol.

Some more signs of spring

Tags

asparagus, daffodils, postaday2015, spring

          
Not only spring bounty in the garden, perhaps bounty isnt’t the correct word since I only have the one daffodil, but spring bounty in the kitchen, asparagus!

These are the most beautiful asparagus that I have seen in such a long time, I am not a fan of the pencil skinny aspargus, I much prefer the thick stemmed sized and when I saw them in the supermarket, I grabbed them immediately. I am going to make a dijon mustard vinaigrette to serve with them, it’s going to be so delicious, the firm bite of the asparagus with the thick creaminess of the vinaigrette, it makes for a delicious pairing.

I can’t believe that I only have the one daffodil, he is very cute all alone in the side bed, poor lamb. I think that maybe come fall, I will plant a whole bunch of daffodil bulbs to give my little guy some more company next spring, he looks like he needs it.