After reading about the shaved asparagus in the Frank at the AGO post, a friend of mine said she’d try and make the shaved asparagus. I never did hear back from her how it
went but she had inspired me to try it myself.
I quickly discovered that the shaving was not as simple as one might think. I only have to do eight spears for two servings but it took a while. I
can imagine it could get a bit tedious if you have to prepare for, say, a dinner
for six.
I had initially held the asparagus in my hand and shaved it
like I would a carrot. But as the
asparagus got thinner, it became harder to shave and the shavings became more
uneven. I subsequently looked it
up on the internet and learned that a better way to shave it is to put it down
on a board and shave sideways. See
below.
The shaving also got a bit tricky. The first few shaves were easy and
quite neat. But when I got down to
the end, it got more difficult to create an even “shave”. The last pieces were thicker and
therefore would take longer to cook.
I didn’t look up any recipes but thought I’d just stir fry
it. Heated up some olive oil, threw
in some minced garlic, then tossed in the asparagus shavings, dash of cooking
wine, salt and pepper to taste when done.
This came out quite tasty and had more volume than I’d expect from
eight stalks of asparagus. It is
the typical Chinese food phenomenon (akin to the five loaves and two fishes
miracle?!) – when you cut things up into small slices, there always seemed to be more and
you could serve more people with it.
So the eight spears provided a decent plateful, clearly too much for
two. So if you’re cooking for six,
you probably wouldn’t need to do six times 8 spears. I’d think if you’re just serving this as a side, 10 spears
would be plenty for six. And not a whole lot of work afterall - if you do it the right way!
