cooking asaragus as easy as boiling a kettle!

Asparagus is not just the domain of the TV cooks! It is an easy and delicious vegetable to cook at home. Asparagus is a gift that keeps on giving... which other vegetable can cause the scent of your urine to change?

Asparagus is very inexpensive to purchase in Asia. It can easily be added to stir frys to add a crunchy interesting flavour.

Another easy recipe that uses Asparagus is to add it to a Quiche Lorraine recipe. Here is my easy quiche recipe. This makes 12 mini quiches. To make this most effectively I would recommend the use of a silicon muffin tray and silicon individual cupcake moulds. Using metal trays in my opinion creates too much washing up as no matter how well the trays are greased the pastry always sticks!

Ingredients:

1 sheet puff pastry

200g grated cheddar cheese

2 rashers of bacon chopped

1 onion chopped

3 eggs

8 spears of asparagus chopped into 1cm pieces

3 shakes of Tuscan seasoning ( Masterfoods spice)

Method:

use a glass to cut the pastry into circles, roll them out to the size of the muffin tray. Place the pastry into the muffin tray, then place  a cupcake mould on top of the pastry and fill with ceramic beads or rice. cook for 10 mins at 180 degrees centrigrade

Whilst waiting add the other ingredients to a bowl and mix well. When the pastry is cooked remove the cupcake moulds and divide the mixture into each pastry case. Cook for a further 10 mins.

Allow to cool to an edible temperature.

Another easy way to prepare asparagus is to use the following method. You can just cut off the woody end of the asparagus. Then cut the asparagus into smaller pieces and place them in a bowl. Boil the kettle and then pour the boiling water over the asparagus. Leave for 2 minutes until the asparagus is bright green. Then pour off the boiling water and plunge asparagus into chilled water.

Drain and serve seasoned with salt and pepper and a dash of olive oil. mmm delicious!