Spring is in the air, and with that our thoughts are turning towards one of our favorite vegetables: asparagus! With such a short season, we always try to take advantage by eating asparagus on everything. In this recipe asparagus is the vegetable, the garnish, and the sauce for your pasta.
Below: harvesting the last of Asparagus for the season!
Serves: 4-6
Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
2 bunches of asparagus (skinnier is preferable)
½ lb Pasta (for GF pasta, Camille really likes Banza Chickpea Pasta)
1/4 cup olive oil, plus 2 tbsp for frying
1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, plus 4 extra sundried tomatoes (in oil) for garnish, chopped
1 avocado
1 cup salted water (take from the pasta water)
3 tbsp nutritional yeast
1 tbsp oregano
1 tbsp soy free Vegenaise or JustMayo
Juice and zest from 1 small lemon
½ tsp pepper
Salt to taste
Cut the bottoms off the asparagus. Set aside 1 fistful of asparagus (you will broil these for a topping). Chop the rest of the asparagus stalks in 1 inch pieces and divide into two piles. It would be good if one pile had softer pieces such as the heads and slim stems and the other pile had the chunkier stalks. Make sure you have 3 cups of chunkier stalks which you will use to make the sauce.
Boil water for pasta. Dissolve enough salt in this water that it tastes like the ocean, for us this is usually around 3-4 tbsp to about 3 quarts of water. This may seem like a lot of salt, but most of it will be washed away when you drain the pasta, and the vegetables and pasta will absorb salt during the cooking process so that the dish will taste well seasoned without needing to be salted much when it is finished. Start to cook the pasta. When it has 3 min left to be fully cooked, add the pile of softer asparagus pieces (heads and slim stalks). Let this cook for about 3 minutes. The goal is to cook the asparagus until it is bright green and tender, but not so much that it starts to lose its color. If you haven’t already, steal about a cup of water from the pot and set aside, you will use this in the sauce. Then, after about a minute or when the asparagus is bright green, drain the pasta asparagus mixture, rinse with cold water, and set aside.
While the pasta cooks, you can start cooking the sauce. Start by braising 3 cups of asparagus stalks. To braise, heat up the pan with 2 tbsp olive oil. Once the oil is hot, add the asparagus and cook until browned. Add about 1/2 cup of water and cook until asparagus is soft.
Combine the braised asparagus with the 1/4 cup sun-dried tomatoes, avocado, the cup of pasta water, nutritional yeast, oregano, Vegenaise, lemon juice (reserve 1 tsp), pepper, and salt in a food processor and puree until smooth.
While this is happening, drizzle some olive oil over the fistful of reserved whole asparagus pieces. Broil these in the oven until crispy (but not burnt). Drizzle the reserved lemon juice on the freshly roasted asparagus. Chop into inch long pieces.
Finally, combine the cooked pasta and asparagus with the sauce and top with broiled asparagus pieces and minced sun-dried tomatoes. Enjoy!