One of the culinary specialties of the region of Germany where I lived was white asparagus (weisser Spargel). During Spargelzeit (asparagus season), every meal at every restaurant in the city featured different preparations of this treat. Restaurants ran special Spargelmenus featuring secret Spargel recipes, and the local grocery store's Spargelzeit jingle (Oh die schoene Spargelzeit!) is still stuck in my head.
Asparagus--white, green, or purple--may be one of the last truly seasonal vegetables in the modern grocery store. It's everywhere for a few months in spring, and then--gone. We always ate asparagus for Easter dinner, but you couldn't have replicated the dish for Christmas if you wanted to, because there was just no asparagus to be had.
We're in the midst of die Spargelzeit in Tulsa, and the DDH and I cooked up this vegetable in a way that was completely new to us and, we though, utter genius...until I posted it on Facebook and apparently everybody around here does this already.
Still delicious.
Grilled Bacon-Wrapped Asparagus
Our version contains only two ingredients:
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| Bacon |
and
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| Asparagus |
We took small bundles of asparagus--ours were pretty thin, so maybe half a dozen per bundle--and wrapped them in three strips of bacon each, securing the bacon with toothpicks:
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| Asparagus in a blanket. |
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| Little pigs all in a row. |
Unfortunately, reality bit. After about ten minutes of grilling, we ran out of propane. And even though we have not one, but two spare propane tanks taking up space on the back porch...they were both empty, too.
So we took them inside and finished them off on the stove.
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| Not quite done yet. |
They were delicious! Green and sweet and rich and salty all at once.
We liked them just plain, but Facebook friends apparently doctor them up different ways. Try soaking the asparagus in some olive oil, salt, and/or pepper before you wrap them, or rubbing chile powder or brown sugar into the bacon before using it. You can try more or fewer asparagus stalks or bacon strips per bundle, too.
Enjoy!
That looks delicious! One more reason added to the list of why I need a house with a backyard...they frown on having a grill in or around our apartment. Some sort of fire code thing, pfft :-p
ReplyDeleteLame! But, since we finished ours on the stove, I bet they would actually do just fine cooked there, too. You would just have to turn them more frequently and keep the heat low. Or put the cover half-on the pan to sort of replicate a grill environment.
ReplyDeleteWorth a try! ^_^