This James Beard Recipe Is My New Favorite Way to Cook Asparagus.
One thing I loved about owning a house was finding all sorts of plants that I didn’t plant growing around the lot. One such surprise is the asparagus patch. It’s not a particularly productive asparagus patch, but it’s delicious. Three or four stems stick out at a time, not enough for food, but more than enough for entertainment purposes.
I let the stems grow and germinate (I guess that’s the term?) because a couple of people told me to do it. Apparently, if I leave them alone this year, there will be more of them next year. I hope this is true because I just found my new favorite way to cook asparagus, courtesy of a Portland icon.
Chef, food writer, teacher, and famed Portland native James Beard was known as an all-American for efficient and flavorful meals. His soy sauce and buttery asparagus, adapted for Food52 by Eric Kim, are just the thing. Asparagus slices cook quickly in a mixture of soy sauce and oil, coating them with a salty, rich glaze and softening the herbaceous, raw taste of vegetables.
It’s not so much a recipe as it is a method that Kim found at the end of Byrd’s 1964 memoir Raptures and Prejudices [method in bold]:
… if it’s in season, I’ll take asparagus, either boiled quickly until tender but still crispy—and that’s without any garnish other than salt and freshly ground black pepper—or cut into paper-thin diagonal slices and tossed with oil and soy on a two or three minutes in a hot pan, which gives it a delicious texture.
“Paper-thin, diagonal slices” is a bit vague, so I decided to cook the asparagus two ways and see which I like best. I started with a little simple knife work, cutting off about four ounces of the stems on the bias to make thin, though not quite paper-thin, slices.
For the second batch of four ounces, I used a vegetable peeler to make really thin slices of paper, first removing the tips and keeping them intact.
I then cooked them in a hot cast iron skillet using Kim’s proportions for butter and sauce. However, I replaced the soy sauce with fish sauce because I like my vegetables to be a little out of the ordinary. In my opinion, it was a good move. I also garnished the dish with toasted almonds because they look pretty and taste good.
Of the two, I preferred the thicker, knife-cut asparagus slices. The asparagus I cooked with the vegetable peeler was too thin and soft, almost like wet noodles. It also soaked up too much sauce, which made it taste too salty.
The thicker asparagus retained its fresh, crunchy texture and soaked up just the right amount of fish sauce, resulting in a perfectly seasoned, tender-crispy spring vegetable dish. I will do it again (and again and again).
Fish Sauce and Asparagus in Oil (adapted from Eric Kim’s film adaptation of “a very good line in James Beard’s Rapture and Prejudice “).
Ingredients:
- 8 ounces asparagus
- 2 tablespoons salted butter
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce (or soy sauce if you want it classic)
- Optional: fresh peppers and/or roasted almonds.
Cut the asparagus lengthwise into thin slices about 1/4 inch thick (or thinner). Heat a skillet over high heat (I used cast iron) and add the butter. Once the oil starts to brown, add the asparagus and cook for one minute, tossing once or twice.
Add the fish sauce, stir again and cook for a few more minutes. Serve immediately and garnish with pepper and/or toasted almonds if desired.