Monday, May 07, 2007

Ricette di primavera per il Monthly Mingle

In the past few weeks I bought some typical springtime products: asparagus and artchokes. So I decided I will post the recipes of the really simple dishes I made with them as my entry for the Springtime-themed Monthly Mingle hosted by Meeta! Actually, I just checked her website, and she also posted an asparagus recipe! :) Well, asparagus _is_ the typical spring vegetable.. :) Anyway, her post to see lots of interesting properties of this food.

Asparagi sempilci (Simple asparagus)
This is close to a typical Italian recipe for asparagus, except I added the cilantro and had lime on a side instead of lemon in the sauce.
Boil or steam (I opted for steaming, it's easier not to overcook them) one bunch of asparagus. Hard boil two eggs. Prepare a sauce with the hard yolks, smashed with a fork with ~2 tbsp olive oil, salt and a little bit of finely cut cilantro leaves. Mix up well, and spread on the center of the asparagus. Sprinkle olive oil, a little salt and lime or lemon juice on the rest of the asparagus not covered by the sauce. I made this plate for four people, thinking there would be some left. They were all gone in a few minutes :)

Carciofi ancora piu' semplici (Even simpler artchokes)
This is a typical Italian way of eating artchokes, and it's really simple and good and Americans are usually surprised because they never had them before this way :) :) So, just clean the artchokes, slice them thin, add olive oil and salt on them, then thin slices of parmigiano (not too many, in my opinion), and grind some pepper on top. That's it! If the artchokes are good, like in this moment of the year in California, it's a really good dish.

1 comment:

Meeta K. Wolff said...

I love the way Italians make a simple ingredient bring it's full flavor out. Healthy and exquisite. Thanks!