The past few weeks here in Seattle have been the glory days of asparagus. With little else in season yet (besides rhubarb), it is very difficult to pass up the tender, green asparagus spears appearing everywhere from the grocery store to the market to the produce bin. As the asparagus season winds down, or rather, everything else heats up, I thought I’d share some of the asparagus adventures we’ve had.

Asparagus with Smoked Salmon Ravioli in a Rose Sauce

Really, the asparagus was just a side dish here, we didn’t do anything fancy to it, just popped it in salted water to boil for a couple minutes before draining it and serving alongside the ravioli. But thats part of the beauty of fresh asparagus: smetimes the best thing to do with it is absolutely nothing. Cook it in the simplest possible way, and serve it (don’t worry — we did more interesting things with it too).

This recipe is adapted from here. We used smoked salmon ravioli, which we had bought at the market with the asparagus, however, if you can’t find that, probably penne with some chunks of smoked salmon thrown in would work well too.

This recipe made about twice as much sauce as

Ingredients

Pasta:
1/2 lb Smoked salmon ravioli
OR
1/2 lb penne and 1/2 cup smoked salmon

Sauce:
1 tablespoon butter
1 small finely diced onion
1/2 cup diced smoked salmon (if not using ravioli)
2 fluid ounces vodka (or any liquor: we had no vodka and instead used brandy)
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
1 cup crushed tomatoes
salt to taste
ground black pepper to taste
1 pinch ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes

Asparagus:
1/2 lb fresh asparagus rinsed and stemmed

Directions

1. In a large saucepan saute butter and onion with smoked salmon (if using). Once the pan begins to lightly smoke, pull saucepan away from heat source and add the Vodka (or other liquor).
2. When the Vodka has burned off, return the sauce to heat source and mix in the crushed tomatoes and heavy cream (you can tweak the cream to tomato ratio here depending on personal preferences).
3. Season sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and red pepper flakes. Reduce sauce to desired consistency; serve.

As for the asparagus, the prep is pretty easy, but the key is timing. It may seem difficult to mess up a simple side like boiled (or steamed) asparagus, but believe me, I’ve done it. Put the asparagus in to early, and it either ends up limp and overcooked (if you leave it in too long), or worse yet, cold (if you take it out to early). For this recipe, I put a pot of water up to boil for the asparagus at the same time I put up the water for the pasta. Since both ravioli and asparagus cook very quicky, I waited until the sauce was mostly done (in the reducing stage) and put the pasta and aspargus in then. I kept an eye on both, and as soon as the asparagus was done (usually no longer than 5 minutes if the water is boiling when you put it in), drained it, put it back in the pot, and covered it (to keep it warm). Then I drained the ravioli, assembled, and served.