Pictures of Keller's asparagus salad is seriously everywhere in the book.
There's only three pictures in the book, but that's still a lot to me :)
Anyways, just by looking at the pictures of this salad, you'd understand why they used it so often...
So I started off by making the croutons using country bread, garlic, and canola oil. I let the garlic cook in the oil for a bit while I tore up some country bread pieces.
Keller said it's key to to cook these croutons so slow to ensure their garlicky taste.
Onto the asparagus!
Keller said to peel the skin off the asparagus, which was the first the I ever had to do that. Textural reasons maybe? Eh, I don't know why - but if Thomas Keller says to do it, you do it.
While peeling the skin (using a peeler of course), I made a stupid mistake of trying to peel the asparagus while holding them up. This only led to some of the snapping in half. So I found that laying the asparagus on a cutting board and peeling was easier. It sounds obvious, but I'm sure some people were like me and made that sad mistake - haha.
I then laid out the asparagus, drizzled some olive oil, and added some salt & pepper. I let these sit while I began to poach them eggs. Oh, and you see that broken asparagus? Sigh, yeah don't do it. Good thing only a few broke...
So apparently you can poach eggs way before and just refrigerate them or leave them on ice baths until you need them. But, since poaching eggs were the most nerve-wrecking part of this recipe, I left it for last. Surprisingly however, it was a lot easier than I thought. Keller said to give the boiling water two swirls using a wooden spoon, but I gave the water a couple of more swirls.
You can tell which egg was the first one - haha. But, after the first, wrinkly one, the next two came out beautifully. Pretty good for the first time poaching eggs, right? I think yes :)
To finish off the salad, I finally cooked the asparagus. The asparagus should be grilled - unfortunately I only have an electric stove to "grill" it on...
Now that everything was ready to plate, I trimmed off the tails and uneven spots on the poached egg, assembled the asparagus, added the garlic croutons & prosciutto, and topped it with fleur de sel, pepper, and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. TA DA!!
Thoughts: This salad was amazing. It was a textural party in my mouth - the gooey/slimness of the egg, squishiness of the prosciutto, crunchiness of the asparagus, and the crispy croutons. Deng. Deng. The flavors all worked so well together too. The dish was pretty simple, yet so elegant. Loved it! This is something you can whip up pretty quickly and still have your friends impressed. Writing about this already makes me want to make more.
Scallion Potato Pancake
This recipe reminded me of something I usually eat at home - Korean pancakes. Thought I'd give it a try and see.
First, I peeled and cleaned the russet potatoes. Then cut them into smaller blocks and put them in the food processor to shred them. Once they were shredded, the potatoes were rinsed in cold water and dried in a salad spinner. Then added the cornstarch to the potatoes and tossed to coat it evenly.
Whole Foods sadly didn't have scallions, so I used something similar - chives. Since they were already thin, I just had to cut them into shorter strands to use.
In a large pan, I heated up some canola oil and added about two handfuls of the potatoes evenly. Add some salt and pepper to the potatoes and then added some chives. Then I put more potato on top of that and added salt&pepper.
I waited until the bottom got golden brown and then flipped it over.
Once both sides were golden and crispy, I cut them into pieces and plated it with a little more chives on top. Remember to eat these asap so they don't end up getting soggy!
Thoughts: Maybe it was cause I ate it after the asparagus explosion, but I thought it was just alright. It was good and tasty for sure though. Keller recommended eating it with some the sauces in his book, which I should have done. This would definitely be good when people are over - just cut them into smaller squares and have Keller's sauces made. Yumm. I'll have to make this again after I make those sauces just to try the pairing.
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