Last Night's Dinner 25

A ridiculously simple and versatile side dish/sauce which takes moments

Hello everyone,

A quick one for you today. I have just come inside for respite after tackling brambles in the garden and warding off a neighbour who wants me to cut back my beautiful buddleia globosa. This is not going to happen as it is currently covered in flower buds after a couple of quiet years and is the biggest bee magnet in my garden. We are into May and have been having a mini heat wave (summer?) this week - I managed to catch the tulips at Kew before they went over and have been enjoying crisp, misty mornings which have been positively Turneresque. The quince and medlars are all flowering too, my road is fragrant with lilac (just about everyone seems to have one) and I find myself walking down the main road more often than usual to admire this wisteria which grows rampant over this much neglected house - just look how it has climbed into the tree. Absolutely glorious.

I have been reading a lot on food this week - my cookery book of the moment is Noor Murad’s Lugma which I am cooking my way through at the moment and shall be reviewing soon. And for those of you who are interested in food beyond your own day to day cooking and eating of it, Jenny Linford’s collaboration with the British Museum, Repast, is newly out. It is an absolutely fascinating history of food, told chronologically through the vast array of artefacts found in the BM. One to pour over and dip into and learn a great deal from. It leaves me slightly in awe not only of the Herculean effort and brilliant writing, but also in terms of the subject matter, just how creative, inventive, curious and resourceful human beings are.

So yes, we are into May and full into the asparagus season and it is coming down in price now too, as long as you stay clear of tourist trap markets and shops which curate rather than select their produce. Good honest green grocers and market stalls sell the same asparagus at a fraction of the price. I’m looking forward to the farmers market tomorrow too, as I am told it is likely that the very first UK grown courgettes will be in - tiny, with flower and importantly, not bloated with water.

I find I have not been very bothered about evening meals this week. It has been hot and I have been batch cooking pasta and combinations of lentils, beans and grains to go in salads for the children’s lunches. (They want this rather than sandwiches, I check, they both want resistant starch). These sit in the fridge and make for quick meals for me too. A handful of salad leaves, a bit of cheese, maybe some flaked smoked mackerel or some olives and capers….it’s all I’ve wanted other than buttered bread and marmite. But last night Shariq came home with steak and even though I did think about sitting down at the table and just working through a very good piece of rump and nothing else, I thought better of it and cooked some vegetables. So today’s recipe is more of a side dish, but it also morphed into a salad (today’s lunch) and a pasta sauce too.

Firstly, some asparagus 101 - a reminder on how to pressure steam or roast them, plus a soup using the trimmings, can be found by heading here.

And one of my favourite risotto recipes can be found here.

And here we have recipes for steamed egg custards with asparagus and crab, as well as lamb meatballs with chard, new potatoes and asparagus.

But at the moment I find myself wanting to do evermore simple things with them. Lightly pressure roasted or steamed with soft boiled eggs (see the side-by-side method in Modern Pressure Cooking for timings), or simply dressed with a vinaigrette.

This recipe is basically just throwing asparagus and cherry tomatoes into a pressure cooker. I intended to serve them just cooked, as vegetable side dishes, but then decided at the last minute to make a very quick sauce out of the tomatoes instead. It took moments, tasted wonderful and is incredibly versatile. I ate it as a side dish last night, then made it again this lunchtime and turned it into a salad and next time will make a pasta sauce too.

Steamed Asparagus with Tomatoes, Mustard and Tarragon

1 tbsp olive oil

2 bunches of asparagus, snapped or trimmed and well washed

300g cherry tomatoes, preferably very ripe

2 sprigs tarragon (or any other herbs you like)

50ml white wine or vermouth (optional, you can just use water)

15g butter

2 tsp tarragon mustard OR 2 tsp Dijon mustard and 2 tbsp finely chopped tarragon

1/2 tsp dried thyme OR leaves from a sprig of fresh thyme

A squeeze of lemon juice