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Asparagus
(Sparagi) Asparagus can be prepared in many different ways, but the simplest and best is that of boiling them and serving them seasoned with olive oil and vinegar or lemon juice. However there are other ways as, for instance, the following :
Put them whole to brown a little with the green part in butter and, after seasoning them with salt, pepper and a pinch of grated cheese, pour over the melted butter when it is browned. Or else divide the white from the green part and place them as follows in a fireproof plate: Dust the bottom with grated cheese and dispose over the points of the asparagus one near the other; season with salt, pepper, grated cheese and little pieces of butter. Make another layer of asparagus and, seasoning in the same way, continue until you have them. Be moderate in the seasoning .
Cross the layers of asparagus like a trestle, put on the oven and keep until the seasoning , is melted. Serve hot.
If you have some brown stock, parboil them first and complete the cooking with brown stock, adding a little bust and dusting moderately with grated cheese. 115
Three treatments in one entry: boiled and dressed cold, pan-browned in butter, and layered in a gratin dish. All of them depend on not overcooking the asparagus in the first place.
- Cook the spears brieflyOlder practice generally boiled asparagus considerably longer than we now do, and this recipe gives no time. Modern spears want 2-4 minutes in well-salted boiling water, until the stalk bends but does not flop; for the gratin, 2 minutes is enough since they finish in the oven.
- "Divide the white from the green part"This most likely refers to the pale woody base of an ordinary green spear rather than to white asparagus, though Italian kitchens of the period used both. Snap or trim off the bottom inch or two, and peel the lower stalk of thick spears with a vegetable peeler so the whole length cooks at the same rate.
- Fireproof plateA shallow earthenware or metal gratin dish, glazed and flameproof. Any low-sided baking dish works; choose one only slightly longer than the spears so the layers stay tight.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the book, like others of its date, leaves it to the cook, and the dish need only be in long enough to melt the butter and cheese. Around 400F for 8-10 minutes will brown the top without cooking the spears much further.
- "Cross the layers like a trestle"Alternate the direction of each layer so the tips are not buried and the butter can run down between the stalks. Two or three layers is the practical limit before the bottom layer steams to mush.
- Grated cheeseParmigiano-Reggiano, or grana padano. The instruction to "be moderate" is the point of the dish: asparagus and browned butter are the flavours, and a heavy hand with salt plus cheese will bury both.
- Brown stock, and "a little bust"Brown stock here means a reduced meat gravy of the sugo di carne type rather than a thin broth. "A little bust" looks like a typesetting error, most likely for "butter".
- Dressing the boiled versionOlive oil with vinegar or lemon, salt and pepper, over spears that are just warm rather than hot or chilled. Roughly 1 lb of asparagus dressed this way serves three or four as a first course.
Maria Gentile's The Italian Cook Book (1919) was assembled for American readers, and entries like this one recall, though the book makes no such acknowledgement, Pellegrino Artusi's La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene (1891), the book that did more than any other to fix a shared Italian cooking vocabulary in print. The preference stated in the first line -- that the simplest treatment is the best -- is one Artusi is often said to have shared, and the layered gratin that follows is the sort of variation offered as a concession rather than an improvement. Asparagus was a seasonal luxury in both countries, harvested in spring and eaten within a day or two of cutting, and the dish is finished on a fireproof plate that goes straight from oven to table.