Serves: 2 people
Takes: 20 minutes
Grilled asparagus and avocado with green goddess dressing
Ingredients
300 g asparagus
500 g new potatoes
1 large avocado
1 mixed bunch of green herbs, such as coriander, parsley or mint
2 spring onions
1 clove garlic
1-2 limes
olive oil
sunflower oil for grilling
salt and pepper
dried chile flakes to garnish
Equipment
Grill or barbecue (or do it under the oven grill)
large circular biscuit cutter or crumpet ring
large saucepan
blender or mortar and pestle
Method
Boil 2 L of water in a kettle. Fill a pot with the boiling water, salt liberally and add potatoes, unpeeled. Cook for around 10-15 minutes depending on their size, until a knife penetrates easily.
Trim the ends of the asparagus. For young, tender asparagus like the ones I used, it will usually not be necessary to chop much off. For fatter asparagus, the ends can sometimes be a bit woody and the skin may also benefit from a light peeling. Use your judgement here.
Around 5 minutes after the potatoes have gone in, place a metal crumpet ring into the saucepan (or in my case, a kiwi-shaped cookie cutter, pictured above), pushing the potatoes out of the way. Gently lower the ends of asparagus into the metal frame, so that the asparagus stands up, half submerged in the water. This allows the bottoms to cook without overcooking the more tender tips. Cook this way for 5 minutes.
Meanwhile make the green goddess dressing. Place half an avocado, 1 clove of garlic, the juice of 1 lime, the bunch of herbs, the spring onions, copious amounts of olive oil and a dash of water into the blender and blend on high for 2-3 minutes, pausing and scraping down the blender if needed. I have not give precise quantities for liquids here as you can decide for yourself whether you want a thicker or more liquid dressing. Season to taste.
Pre-heat the grill or barbecue and oil lightly with sunflower oil. Remove the asparagus from the saucepan and place directly onto the grill. Slice half the avocado and place the slices onto the grill as well, squeezing over lime juice to prevent oxidation. Flatten the vegetables down onto the grill with a fish slice, ensuring they get beautiful dark griddle marks on each side.
Remove the potatoes from the water once cooked, drain. Chop any large potatoes in half or quarters so they are all the same size.
To serve, you have two options. You can either toss everything together in a bowl with the dressing, perhaps adding some spinach or salad greens. Or you can plate it by laying out the potatoes on each plate and giving them a quick smash with the back of a fork, before topping with the avocado and asparagus and spooning over the dressing. Garnish with herbs, drizzle of olive oil and dried chile flakes. Bon appétit!
Missing the Golden Gate Bridge
I flew home from California. Home after a year away. Home to sit in my Mother’s kitchen and eat a bowlful of granola and homemade yoghurt and feijoas, hand-squeezed grapefruit juice from the prodigious tree in our backyard. I didn’t know then that it was one of the last times I would sit in my childhood home. The house was sold not long after, without ceremony.
I remember that the kitchen was full of early winter sunshine and that I was reading Vikram Seth’s The Golden Gate. I read it from cover to cover, devouring the book, astounded by his command of language, the breadth and imagination of his rhyme, his sheer nerve, to write an entire novel as a poem in Onegin stanzas. I was homesick for America after a year of being homesick for New Zealand. I was homesick for the scale and confidence of America, for the anonymity of America. I was nostalgic for a California I barely knew, a California that had been nothing more than a summer fling, for a San Francisco I thought of as the sister city to Wellington, the tall houses standing on each other’s shoulders up the hills, the cable cars and earthquakes. But Wellington had no bridges. Of the Golden Gate Bridge, Seth wrote:
The whispering mists with crisp intensity And over the opaque immensity A deliquescent wash of blue Reveals the bridge, long lost to view In summer’s quilt of fog: the towers High-built, red-gold, with their long span The most majestic spun by man
I had chosen California as my last stop for my year in America. I had unfinished business there. I wanted to see the Golden Gate Bridge emerge red-gold from the whispering mists.
It was not the first time I had been in San Francisco. That had been years earlier. I’d had a 9 hour stop-over in San Francisco, so I’d taken a train into the city from the airport. I was round-eyed, bewildered by this seeming blip in time that had deposited me into bright sunshine. It was my first time on a long-haul flight, my first time in America. I had no map, no smartphone, no plan. I stepped out into the city and found office workers eating lunch between the shadows of the looming buildings. I stopped a middle-aged man in a striped shirt and told him my story.
What shall I do, I asked him. He looked at me with great seriousness, frowning into his black moustache. Finally he said, with some authority, go see the Golden Gate Bridge, and eat a pretzel. He pointed a finger and I walked in the direction he pointed. I walked and walked through the bustle of the city, on and on, until I could smell water, until I could see a glimpse of blue, until I saw a red, rusty shape cutting across the horizon. The Golden Gate Bridge, I breathed, I must be there. A smattering of tourists were taking photos of themselves, so I asked one of them to take my photograph in front of the bridge with my silver camera. I returned to the airport. I flew to Europe. Later, I uploaded the photo to facebook, captioning it “Me at the Golden Gate Bridge!” The answer came back with unerring speed. Wrong bridge. I had spent 9 hours in San Francisco and all I had to show for it was a photo me in front of the Oakland Bay Bridge.
California looms large in the culinary imagination. It feels impossible not to fall into tropes, Alice Waters, counter-culture, the freshest produce, green juices, tacos and Mexicali. Swinging among all of them is Green Goddess Dressing, which the internet tells me was first created at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco in 1923. This is a very loose version of that dressing, I’m not going to be prescriptive about it. If you want a dressing that is smooth and liquid, then add more water or lime juice and blend for longer; consider adding a dash of coconut cream or yoghurt to make it creamier; add capers and mayonnaise to make it more authentic. I preferred for the herbs to retain some of their shape and for the dressing to be more of the consistency of a salsa verde.
I’ve spent the entire month of April avoiding asparagus, thinking about the million and one recipes for asparagus that already exist, wondering what more I can possibly add. This is a newsletter about seasonal vegetables. Asparagus is impossible to avoid. It is the essence of Spring, a cliché of Spring. But how to write something new about it? Asparagus is a celebration of the abundance of Spring. Abundance is the word I remind myself when I am faced with a saturated wall of Instagram food pictures and I begin to question the value of adding mine. Abundance. From a place of abundance, one bridge is pretty much as good as any other. From a place of abundance, there is always room in the world for another asparagus recipe.
Asparagus for me is always green, but in this part of the world they prefer it white. At the market I saw no-one selling green asparagus, but white asparagus was in abundance. White asparagus is gentler, less pungent (though it will still make your pee smell), it is an old world sauvignon blanc compared to a grassy Marlborough one. I ended up buying my green Italian asparagus from the supermarket. In my partner’s family they eat asparagus à la flamande with potatoes, eggs, parsley, butter. This is how he cooks asparagus for me, but sometimes he also griddles them to give them a hint of smoke. Asparagus can be eaten with hollandaise sauce, or just plain boiled and topped with butter. The idea for asparagus paired with a herb-forward dressing came from Anna Jones’ fabulous vegetarian cookbook A Modern Way to Cook.
Asparagus is often served with eggs and they would also go wonderfully with this week’s recipe. Here’s the recipe again, as a salad this time. I mixed a more liquid version of the dressing with the potatoes before putting the asparagus, avocado and poached egg on top. It is topped with fiery pickled green chillies.
I started this newsletter to commit to doing more of what brings me joy - writing, cooking, dreaming up food ideas - and in the hope that it might inspire others to find joy in their lives (and in their kitchens) as well. Reading Ruby Tandoh’s searing food memoir Eat Up, I learn that a New Zealand study published in 2016 concluded that young people who take part in some kind of everyday creative activity, such as writing or cooking new recipes, fall into an upward spiral, with higher well-being, creativity and enthusiasm compared to those who have not done such activities. Anecdotal as it may be, I can attest to that. I am happier since I started this newsletter.
Thanks for supporting me by subscribing, especially to the bunch of new subscribers who have joined over the past couple of weeks. It makes a world of difference to have an audience. As usual, any thoughts, feedback or ideas for new posts are always gratefully received. I got an enthusiastic response to last week’s piece on plastic and food waste, which is on track to becoming my most-viewed edition of the newsletter, second only to the piece on Jerusalem Artichokes and sourdough pizzas. Let me know (by email, or in the comments box) if you’d like more writing on sustainability.
Thank you for reading. May your week be full of abundance.
Amelia.
PS Incidentally, I was inspired to make black tahini after reading Anna Jones’ method. I toasted 150 g black and 50 g white, hulled sesame seeds, allowed them to cool completely, and then blended, added a teaspoon of sunflower oil at the end to assist. Fresh tahini is out of this world compared to the shop-bought stuff and goes beautifully on vanilla icecream. Here’s a photo!