Romesco Sauce with Asparagus

Quite a long while back I was sent a jar of Romesco sauce to be creative with. Well I wasn’t all that creative, but what I made was a real spring treat.

Romesco sauce is a Catalan sauce that is typically made from almonds, pine nuts, and/or hazelnuts, roasted garlic, olive oil and nyora peppers, a smaller, sweet, dried variety of red bell pepper. Other common ingredients include roasted tomatoes, red wine vinegar and onion. Leaves of fennel or mint may be added, particularly if served with fish or escargot. It is perhaps most often served with seafood, but can also be served with a wide variety of other foods including poultry and vegetables – especially calcots.

I had intended to do something adventurous. Something that would require hours of looking through food history and recipe books and then a day or two pottering around the kitchen. Something that would have me conjuring up memories of distant trips to the Catalan region of Spain, but alas that wasn’t meant to be.

As some of you may already know I started a new job recently and between that and family commitments my time for cooking & writing is somewhat limited right now. I’m in need of speedy recipes, food that can be ‘thrown together’ at the last minute and requires minimal effort. I am of course sure that I will soon find my feet again and get in to a better routine and work/life balance again. I must say though that I am loving my new job and all the extra studying involved.

After a little deliberation I followed a Jill Duplex recipe idea for Asparagus with Romesco Sauce & Almonds. Although obviously all I had to do was cook my asparagus.

Frequent readers of this site will know I love asparagus, no better make that adore asparagus, not only does it taste fantastic but it is a super-food too, by that I mean it has numerous health benefits. It is a nutrient-dense food which in high in folic acid and is a good source of potassium, fibre, vitamin B6, vitamins A and C, and thiamine. Here’s an interesting fact for you, asparagus belongs to the lily family.

The asparagus season is very short though (usually from early May to late June), and cultivation requires intense work. Organic asparagus is the ultimate challenge. A weedy annual crop that can take eight to ten years to come to fruition. During that time it will need almost constant labour to control weeds because the feathery foliage, even when established, is never dense enough to suppress competition from weeds.

Asparagus should always be kept in the fridge and, like so many things, is best fresh. Standing it up right in a little water will help to preserve its life. The flavour is normally most intense in the tip, becoming sweeter lower down and tough at the base. Smaller spears tend to be produced at the beginning and towards the end of the season and can be a little tougher than their fatter mid season cousins. It is normally necessary to trim off the bottom inch or so of the stalks; the point at which the stalk snaps cleanly is a good guide to where to trim; don’t discard the trimmings though, that would be sacrilege indeed, instead use them in stocks and soups.

Well, after all the excitement of starting a new job and the ‘travel’ by way of cooking I’m in the mood for a bit of real traveling, so I might just head over and look at Cox & Kings tailor-made holidays.

Posting here, may well continue to be rather sporadic. I apologise and please do forgive.

Tagged as: Asparagus, Catalan, Cox & Kings, Jill Duplex, Nuts, Nyora Peppers, Romesco sauce, Salsa, Sauce, Spain, Vegetable, vegetarian