Asparagus and walnut tagliatelle

You know that feeling when you could chew off your own arm, you're that hungry? When you worry you might faint if your chosen recipe takes longer than five minutes to cook... It really is a small miracle when at a time like this you create a dish that's actually worthy of a blog, yet this is what happened today...

I cooked some fresh pasta, you know the sort that takes about 3min to cook, and threw the chopped asparagus tips into the boiling, salted water for the final minute. In the meantime, I fried some lovely, French garlic and fresh chilli in olive oil, and crushed walnuts with the back of a knife. Threw them in, grated some lemon zest and fried it all for a further 2min. I drained the tagliatelle and asparagus and added these to the frying pan, squeezed in the lemon juice, and immediately started grating Parmesan into the mix. Season with plenty of celery salt and black pepper before serving. My neighbour tried to speak to me as I was carrying this into the garden to eat. I said "hello" in such a way that he immediately understood that I was very, very hungry

Toasted corn tortillas with British asparagus, tabasco butter and goat's cheese

It's British asparagus season so it annoys me to see asparagus flown in from Peru still on the shelf at Tesco's. Why why why. Anyway, if you want to read my opinions on these matters, then read this (there's a few extra exclamation marks than I would like to see, but apart from that it's mine), otherwise let's talk about lunch instead. I made corn tortillas, but in my own way. I did a bit of internet research, but there was talk of griddle pans and special types of cornmeal, so I just ignored it all and went with my instincts and my intuition. This is what this year is about for me after all - that was one of my personal resolutions and one which recently I've had to remind myself of. It's only too easy to get lost in a world of other peoples' expectations, but I've done too much soul searching to go down that route now. And besides, I had a special type of toasted cornmeal from Lanzarote that I wanted to use - that's why the tortillas are brown in case you're wondering, I hadn't burnt them. After some experimenting, what I came up with was a cross between pancakes and socca, but since they are made from cornmeal, I've called them tortillas

I tried to make them without eggs first, but this made them too crumbly and fragile, so an egg is definitely needed. Apart from that I used 1 cup flour to 1 cup water, and a pinch of salt. As with the socca I didn't turn them over, I simply fried on a low heat, in the tabasco butter (that's butter mashed with tabasco), until the edges began to raise slightly, then layered some blanched asparagus and goat's cheese on top. I added more tabasco butter once it was plated up, because you can't have too much of that stuff

 And now you've probably guessed why I bought the toasted cornmeal. Isn't that just the best packaging? They had different colours too, for  different levels of toastiness, but the others were big, heavy bags and I didn't really want to overload myself with many bags of flour in my hand luggage

This one was very, very toasty and it tasted pretty amazing. It's kind of obscure and I don't expect I'll be able to find it in the UK, so in the future I will try these with another type of cornmeal and see how it goes... a bit of experimentation is always a good thing I reckon

Asparagus, tomatoes and parmesan

Sometimes, only the simplest ingredients in the most classic combinations will do... I found the recipe for parmesan and basil tomatoes in the Observer a couple of weeks ago, and wondered why I hadn't thought of baking them like this before - drizzled with olive oil and simply seasoned with (garlic) salt and black pepper, with fresh basil and grated parmesan for flavour. Since the discovery, I have eaten them like this about four times, so you could say that they're my current obsession. As far as obsessions go, they're definitely one of my healthier ones

Then, there's the asparagus. What can I say, as Carluccio  points out in his book "Vegetables", "the combination of the melted butter and the nuttiness of the parmesan is a simple one but nonetheless very, very good". I don't even boil the asparagus, I just let them stand in the boiled water for 15minutes while the tomatoes are baking

Be warned: If, like me, you don't have any bread in the house to mop up the juices, you may end up being completely disgusting and using your fingers, or even licking the plate



Quinoa with Asparagus and peri-peri butter

At certain times of the year, it just feels instinctively right to be eating certain foods. In the Autumn, I go mad for squashes - you've probably deduced this from the sheer amount of squash recipes that you are presented with around that time. In the Springtime, this is replaced by an asparagus frenzy. I eat it ever other day in one form or another. One day, I'll have it with olive oil, balsamic and parmesan shavings for a quick lunch, another day I'll make a risotto or an asparagus salad. I won't tire of it until the season is over, because I am always looking for new and exciting ways of using it. The other day, I found this brilliant, and very simple recipe (my favourite kind) on 101 Cookbooks. As usual, I changed it, so that I could use up the ingredients I already had at home, but the concept's the same - it's still based around the main ingredients of quinoa, asparagus, butter and creme fraiche, but instead of pine nuts I used sunflower seeds, English mustard instead of Dijon and peri-peri instead of Tabasco. So I guess you can't really call it "Tabasco and Asparagus Quinoa" anymore. I used exactly the same techniques as 101 Cookbooks, so I won't go into them all again, but, as a brief outline: the first four ingredients are combined to make the peri-peri butter, before being added to the cooked quinoa, toasted seeds and lightly cooked asparagus. it really is as simple as that, so if you are a reasonably confident cook, you may not even need to read the long version



Ingredients (serves 4)

1/2 cup butter, salted

1 1/2 tsp English mustard

2 tblsp peri-peri sauce

Squeeze of lemon juice

400g asparagus aprox.

4 cups cooked quinoa

1/2 cup sunflower seeds, toasted

4 dollops of creme fraiche, to serve

I love the concept of a flavoured butter. It's so simple and so perfect. Watch this space for more on that. And more asparagus recipes, of course