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Asparagus a I'Anvers
Clean a bunch of asparagus and cook it in salt water for fifteen minutes. To do this successfully, tie the bunch round with some tape and place it upright in a pan of boiling water. Let the heads be above the water so that they will get cooked by the steam and will not be broken. Simmer in this way to prevent them moving much. Meanwhile, hard-boil three eggs and chop some parsley. Lay the asparagus on a dish and sprinkle parsley over it, place round the sides the eggs cut in halves long-ways, and serve as well a sauce-boat of melted butter.
A plain Flemish spring dish that stands or falls on the asparagus itself. The upright bundle method is sound but the timing belongs to an older, thicker vegetable.
- Fifteen minutes is too longFifteen minutes is too long for most asparagus today -- that time suits fat, peeled white spears rather than slender green ones. Modern green spears want 4-6 minutes in boiling salted water, thick white ones 10-15 after peeling. Test with a knife tip at the base of a stalk rather than trusting the clock.
- Tape means tapeCotton tape or kitchen string, tied twice around the bundle, top and bottom. It holds the spears upright and lets you lift them out in one piece; cut it away only after draining, or the heads will scatter.
- Standing them upA tall narrow pan is the point, so the tough bases boil while the tips steam. A stockpot or the base of an asparagus steamer works; failing that, invert a tall pan lid over a saucepan to trap the steam around the tips.
- Salt waterRoughly a tablespoon of salt per 2 quarts. A pinch of sugar is sometimes added to white asparagus to soften its bitterness, which is worth doing if you use white.
- The eggs"Hard-boil" here means firm yolks that will hold their shape when halved: 9-10 minutes for large eggs, then straight into cold water so the shells peel. Some versions of this dish mash the egg into the warm butter at the table instead of halving it.
- Melted butter, not clarifiedA sauce-boat of plain butter melted until foaming, sometimes with a squeeze of lemon. Do not let it brown, and do not thicken it; the whole point is that it pools with the egg on the plate.
- Drain properlyWet asparagus dilutes the butter into something thin and grey. Stand the bundle on end in a folded towel for a minute before laying it on the dish.
- YieldA bunch is about 1 to 1.5 lb, serving three or four as a first course, two as a light lunch with bread. Serve warm rather than hot; the dish is not improved by heat.
Asparagus "a l'Anvers" is Antwerp's claim on a vegetable more usually associated with Mechelen and the sandy soils of the Kempen, where blanched white asparagus was grown in ridged beds and cut before it broke the surface. The pairing with melted butter, chopped hard-boiled egg and parsley is the standard Flemish treatment, still sold in Belgium as asperges op Vlaamse wijze, and the version here is simply that dish with the egg left in halves rather than crushed. Its presence in The Belgian Cook Book is of a piece with the whole volume: Mrs. Brian Luck compiled it in England in 1915, collecting dishes from Belgian refugees of the First World War, so the recipes tend to be short, frugal and written from memory rather than from a professional kitchen. A spring asparagus dish requiring nothing but butter, eggs and parsley would have been among the easier things to reproduce in a borrowed English kitchen.