Gastroville

Excellent photos,again, both asparagus and Le Beaulieu.

Great asparagus is a gift. Your recipe looks wonderful and I love the apple butter. A couple of comments. You can place the bowl with the butter and green apple juice on a bowl of ice and whisk it. it emulsifies rapidly and is easy to control. Gagnaire writes about this technique on his website with H. This under "Foie Gras Chantilly". he also does it with chocolate.

How do you feel about cleaning off the smal outer leaves below the head of the asparagus to "shape" the tip? And peeling? I like to peel asparagus because, even though it might be tender enough, it adds a textural contrast and complexity completely different from the unpeeled part of the whole. the color contrast is beautiful too.

Absolutely, correct remark about how you can do the butter. I only now noticed it being called Chantilly by This. Not an adequate name perhaps but really the same thing. Actually, the same kind of butter is often used in pastries. So it is not as such particularly new. Another good way of doing this butter is to cook beets in butter in a sous-vide bag and whip the butter with the residual juices. Quite good with meat.

Cleaning off should be done with large and thick asparagus for exactly that reason you say. With thinner ones like these I am against it since you loose some of the "green" taste that I look for in this recipe. But sure, you can peel some of it anyway for the visual effect. With the thinner ones I think there is lees to gain from a texture contrast point of view.

The Alain Ducasse technique for roasting asparagus raw is great also. One melts a fair amount of butter in a pan, take it to "noisette" and then roll the asparagus constantly in the pan to cook it through. One must moderate the heat gently so it doesn't burn but finishing the asparagus with some of the butter, a squeeze of lemon juice and then fresh grated parmigiano is a real treat.

Yes it is great. But do you agree with me that it is better for somewhat larger and thicker asparagus? The cooking in butter gives a layer of the asparagus a nutty buttery taste which is great with the parmesan and yet the center of the asparagus tastes asparagus.

For white asparagus I often suggest the same but using a very light olive oil instead of butter. For example one from Liguria.

Many vegetetables that contain fair amounts of water, such as asparagus, are really better cooked with or in their own liquid so to speak, which is the result of rolling them in the butter.

Yes, the larger and thicker the better for this technique. I was curious about trying it with White asparagus. I am glad that you have tried it. I would have thought it might have played up the inherit bitterness but perhaps not.
I shall give it a try.

I find a mild olive oil with some water is perfect for white asparagus. They surely cannot be searad to the same extent as the green and one should not use the most bitter examples, but I avoid them anyway.

I tried this last night and enjoyed it very much. The whipped butter was delicious with the asparagus and one of the diners said that although he didn't normally like flavored butters, he liked this very much because the apple flavor was subtle and not overpowering. Thanks Mikael.

Great post on one of my all time favourite vegetables. Did you know you can get purple asparagus too? It tastes much like the green and loses colour when cooked.

A couple of questions - is there a way to find out how bitter the white is before purchase? I was recently burnt by a stringy bitter bundle of white and now I have been put off them.

Also - i was wondering what you think about dedicated asparagus steamers? I have long coveted one, but maybe they are no more than a gimmick? What do you think?

thanks

Sam