January 24th, 2012 | 1 comment | Food Porn

On our weekly trip to Plowboys Market, I found some gorgeous asparagus, but it was a bit on the skinny side. Having been craving it lately, I picked it up anyway.

Now, I guess I should preface “skinny asparagus” with a story. Back in the day, I was a bartender at Charley’s Steak House in Tampa, Florida. It was a DiRona award-winning restaurant, one of the top ten independently-owned steakhouses in the nation, blah blah blah. We had asparagus. And it was huge. I’m talking asparagus that was as thick as a Crayola marker sometimes. Think about it. That’s a big stalk of asparagus. It was perfect for grilling because you know those suckers weren’t going anywhere. So a lot of “normal” asparagus looks very skinny to me.

On with it, yes?

So I find this asparagus that isn’t suitable for grilling because it’s so skinny. The boy and I were a bit on the lazy side yesterday and didn’t feel like going to the actual grocery store after going to the market. So I started poking around the cabinet and found enough to go with for a delicious dinner: some leftover feta cheese in the fridge, a boat load of garlic (always), some lemon peel (left over from the freshly juiced margaritas we had just made), basil, and a mostly-full box of linguine. Bam. Happening.

I chopped up some basil and garlic and poured olive oil over it. A little infusing action happening. Then I took a knife and sliced off some of the lemon zest from the peel that was leftover. I chopped that up really fine and threw it in a skillet with a little bit of olive oil as well. Water is in the process of boiling. Over super low heat, I heat up the lemon zest and the olive oil. Smelling good up in here.

I took about half of the rubber-banded bundle of asparagus and chopped it up in to bite-size pieces, like this:

Stinky pee is worth it, ya'll.

Then once I throw the pasta in the water, I add the asparagus and 4 cloves of sliced garlic (you’ve caught on by now that I have an unhealthy obsession with garlic, right? Okay great.) and let it cook a little bit. We’re going for bright green and “tender” not “mushy” here.

Once the pasta is done, I strain it and throw it in a bowl. Then add the asparagus and garlic combo to the bowl. Then grab that delicious basil-garlic-EVOO mixture and pour that into the bowl as I’m tossing it. A few twists of black pepper and continue to toss. Go easy on the oil mixture at first, you don’t want the pasta to be sloppy oily, but nicely coated. Or maybe you do like sloppy oily. Then go for it. Top with crushed red pepper flakes and feta cheese. I used some of the garlic and herb Athenos variety, but you can do whatever you want there.

And there you have it. It takes as long as it takes you to boil water and cook pasta. Seriously. So easy and so fast. Love it.

Up next: trying a variation of this with red quinoa. First time cooking quinoa. We’ll see how that goes!

Tags: asparagus garlic linguine pasta