Monday, December 29. 2008

Espárrago de la Navidad

This is a recipe I synthesized based on other Spanish recipes to be a side dish for Christmas Eve dinner.  It's great for that purpose in two ways: it's dramatically red and green, and it can be 100% prepared ahead and simply baked in the oven for 25 minutes while you do other stuff on the stove.
  • 1/2 cup virgin olive oil, preferably Spanish
  • 3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
  • 1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
  • 1/2 tsp whole cumin seed
  • 1 lbs to 1.5 lbs thin to medium thickness asparagus
  • One 7oz jar roasted and peeled red bell pepper (or roast & peel your own)
  • 2 tbs sherry vinegar, preferably Jerez
  • Salt
  • Small heavy saucepan or butter warmer (1 pint capacity), 9" x 13" or larger baking pan, small strainer.

Pour the olive oil in the small pan with the garlic, red pepper flakes and cumin.  Heat this pan over medium-low heat until the garlic sizzles vigorously (about 10 minutes); take off heat and set aside.

While the oil heats, wash and dry the asparagus and snap off the woody ends.  Place it in the baking pan, spread out in a single layer ... the spears should have plenty of space around them or they will steam instead of roasting.  Chop the bell pepper into 1/4" squares.

Strain the solids out of the olive oil, and drizzle it over the asparagus.  Drizzle the sherry over them as well.  Shake the spears around to make sure they are completely coated.  Then, sprinkle the chopped bell pepper over the asparagus and sprinkle them liberally with salt.

At this point, the asparagus can be held aside in the fridge for up to 8 hours or at room temperature for an hour.  They will even tasted better for the marination.

Heat the oven to 400F.  Put the asparagus in the oven and set a timer.  They can cook for as little as 12 minutes if the spears are very thin and not refrigerated, or as long as 30 if you have thick spears and the pan has been chilled.  You'll know they are done when the asparagus has universally taken on a "wrinkled" appearance and has shrunk slightly.

Serve with any Mediterranean meal.  Serves 4; recipe can easily be doubled if you have two baking pans.
Posted by The Fuzzy Chef in Recipes at 14:08 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)
Defined tags for this entry: , ,
Related entries by tags:
PG-13 Rice
Belgian Calzone
Cal-Bennie
Mango-Tuna Ceviche
Black Bean Asparagus
Tweet This!Tweet This!

Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments
Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications.