Food, Home & Lifestyle
Asparagus
Lesson time 23:41 min
Discover how delicious asparagus can be in three approaches: poached in vegetable stock, then grilled; peeled with a mandolin; and blanched and grilled to serve with crème fraîche.
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Topics include: Asparagus * Vegetable Stock * Peeled Asparagus * Court Bouillon * Blanched Asparagus * Crème Fraîche * Grilled Asparagus * Curled Raw Asparagus
Teaches Modern Vegetarian Cooking
Turn vegetarian dishes into statement pieces with celebrated chef Dominique Crenn. Explore her techniques through a tasting menu of elevated recipes.
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[MUSIC PLAYING] CHEF: As delicate creatures of green surface to bloom. Asparagus. Asparagus is very special for me. And where I grew up also, it's a very seasonal vegetable but it's a very delicious vegetable. I think a lot of people might be intimidated some time to cook asparagus. They just think they're going to overcook it or all that, but it could be a very simple way of doing it and bring the most beautiful flavor to it. In this chapter, we are making asparagus using different techniques. We will make a vegetable stock. We will shave the skin off asparagus spears, blanch those spears in the cool bouillon, then grill them. Plus we will peel additional asparagus stalks using a mandolin and curl them by shucking them in an ice bath. Lastly, we will let the asparagus over a beautiful creme fraiche sauce. So first, we are going to start some type of vegetable stock, very simple. You can have different type of vegetable. You can add carrot to it. You can add onion. I'm going to do just leek, a little bit of garlic, and then I'm going to add some herbs to it and then a touch of lemon at the end. OK. So first I'm going to start with the leek. I'm going to use it to make the stock. So you want to take-- I'm going to cut it in half. You cut-- they don't have to be precise but you want to make sure everything is kind of the same size roughly. Chop it roughly. And what I'm doing with it, I'm just using the white and the green. Doesn't matter. Put it in water. OK. So this is about a six quart stockpot. Try to use filter water that's better, you know. So I'm just going to start with this. OK. So we're going to add the garlic. The way that I like to do my stock is to make it small batches. I think when you do bigger batches, I think you lose the integrity and the flavor of the stock. So we started with the leek. We're going to add some garlic inside. You don't want too much but I will say I'm going to take two cloves of garlic. You want to take the skin out. And you know what I love to do is your hand's going to smell like garlic so I just put like just a little bit of lemon on my hand. Just wash it like this. It smells so good and it can kind of take the smell of the garlic. Leave it out. Once again, you still want your area to be clean. So let it simmer for maybe 15 minutes. You can add a little bit of parsley to it. And the reason why we're making a stock, that stock's going to allow us to blanch the asparagus but also I like to blanch my asparagus in something that is flavorful. You don't have to throw out the stock after that. You can use that stock to make soup, or broth, or add it to rice. And it's delicious. So you wait another few minutes and then, at the end, can add a little bit of thyme. It's important to add kind of the thyme at the end. Thyme can get very-- quite a bitter taste to it so you just want to be careful how much you add. And then you let it simmer for about 10 minutes. And then we can wai...
About the Instructor
With three James Beard awards and a three-Michelin-starred restaurant, Chef Dominique Crenn has transcended traditional vegetarian fare by treating cooking as a kind of poetic expression. Now the celebrated chef invites you to discover inspired vegetarian cooking. Following a full tasting menu of recipes, learn how to elevate your techniques, minimize waste, and turn vegetarian dishes into works of art.
Featured MasterClass Instructor
Dominique Crenn
Turn vegetarian dishes into statement pieces with celebrated chef Dominique Crenn. Explore her techniques through a tasting menu of elevated recipes.
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