Springtime quiche of asparagus and prosciutto

I made this quiche on a whim to use up half a bunch of asparagus, and I found that the combination of asparagus and prosciutto cotto worked perfectly. The slightly salty prosciutto cotto (I wouldn't use prosciutto crudo in this, as it's much saltier than cotto) was just the right complement for the sweet, mildly grassy flavor of the asparagus. A great dish to celebrate the beginning of Spring!


Ingredients:
Shortcrust pastry (see recipe here)
1/2 a bunch (about 10 stalks) of fresh asparagus
A couple of slices, or about 50-60 g. prosciutto cotto - substitute plain ham if you can't get any prosciutto cotto
2 eggs
1/2 small glass of milk
Pecorino sardo or pecorino romano, or other hard cheese of your choosing
A couple cloves of garlic
Olive oil
Salt
Pepper

First, preheat the oven to about 355º F /180º C. Wash the asparagus and break off the hard, stringy parts at the bottom (I usualy just bend them until they snap and throw away the part that snaps off). Cut off the tips and reserve them. Chop the rest of the asparagus stalks crosswise into little circles/cylinders.


Crush the garlic cloves and heat some olive oil in a wide pan that you can cover. When the olive oil is hot, add the garlic and, after a minute or so, the asparagus rondelles (which seems to be a word in English since my spell-checker hasn't marked it wrong!). At this point you can remove the garlic if you like - I just kept it in because I like garlic, but it's not necessary.

Let the asparagus cook a few minutes and then pour enough water in the pan to cover the asparagus. Bring the water to a boil and then cover the pan, turn the heat down low and let simmer 15-20 minutes.

When the asparagus have cooked, drain off the excess water and put the asparagus in a large bowl, along with the garlic, if you desire, and the uncooked asparagus tips.

Dice the prosciutto and add it to the asparagus. Lightly beat the eggs and add them to the prosciutto and asparagus, along with the milk. Grate in a smallish amount of pecorino and add just a pinch of salt and pepper - because the prosciutto adds a significant amount of flavor, you don't want to add in great heaps of pecorino, salt, or pepper here - just enough to spice things up a bit.


Butter a tart pan and roll out the pastry into a disc large enough to cover the pan. Cover the bottom and sides of the pan with the pastry and poke holes in the pastry with a fork. I like to bake the pastry first on its own for about 10 minutes so that it doesn't get all soggy from the filling. If you want, do this first, otherwise just pour in the filling.

Let the quiche bake about 1/2 an hour (after any pre-baking of the crust), remove from the oven and let cool 10 minutes before serving. Like most quiches, this tastes just as good, if not better, after sitting in the refrigerator for a day.

Milanese-style asparagus (asparagi alla milanese)

The asparagus have arrived!! I know it's only February, and it's still gray and rainy (at least on some days), but to my mind Spring begins the same day those wonderful cylindrical bunches of asparagus stalks start appearing at the markets, and this past Sunday there they were!


Of course, the stand with asparagus was all the way down at the end of the market, so by the time I saw it, I had already loaded up my shopping bag with various wintery vegetables - spinach, arugula, etc. But as soon as I saw the asparagus, I knew I had to have some and I simply could not wait another week.

Then of course, I had to figure out how to prepare them. Though my first ideas were to make an asparagus risotto or perhaps a frittata, I felt that since these are the first asparagus of the year, I really shouldn't chop them up and serve them all mixed up with other things; I needed a dish where the asparagus played the starring role - something simple enough to let the flavor and texture of the asparagus shine through and yet also satisfying enough to make up a meal. A quick internet search brought me to this dish - asparagi alla milanese - which fit all my requirements, made quite a dramatic display on the plate, and tasted absolutely wonderful in this cold, wet, not-quite-Spring weather.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of asparagus (about 20 stalks - serves 4 people as a side and 2 as a main dish)
Eggs, roughly 1 every 7 stalks - I only used one for 10 stalks, but that was because eggs don't come in halves
30-50 g of butter
Lots and lots of good parmesan

In general, when you see "alla milanese" in the name of a dish, it means the dish involves high quantities of butter, lots of frying, or both! Recipes for this dish varied in their recommendations on how much butter to use, but most called for significantly more butter than I used - about 100 g or so. You can use more or less, depending on how rich you want this to be.

Fill a large pot with water up to about 3/4 the height of your asparagus stalks (hopefully, your asparagus are all roughly the same height and width - otherwise they will cook at different speeds which will result in some being either undercooked or overcooked). Bring the water to a boil. While the water is heating, wash the asparagus and chop off the bottoms, so that the most fibrous parts are removed.

When the water starts to boil, add salt and then the asparagus, leaving the tips above the level of the water, so they won't cook too fast.


The asparagus should cook until tender, about 20 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they're cooking to make sure the tips stay above the water, and check them every so often for doneness - you definitely don't want to overcook them!

Once the asparagus are done, remove them from the water and lay them in bunches on your serving plates. Grate the parmesan over the asparagus stalks, making sure to cover them in great heaps of it!

Place the butter in a frying pan and heat the pan. When the pan is hot, crack the eggs directly into it, so that the yolk stays intact as it fries (in Italian this is called making an egg all'occhio di bue - like an ox-eye). Make sure to fry only as many eggs at a time as will fit in your pan - if necessary, fry the eggs in batches.

When the egg white has set and the yolk is still soft, use a spatula to slide the egg from the pan onto the asparagus so that it covers the roots, like a little blanket. Do this for all your bunches of asparagus, and then drizzle them with any butter left in the frying pan.

Serve immediately with some bread to mop up the plate.