Welcome to Day 11 of the inaugural Holiday Salad Marathon, where I’m sharing 30 salads in a row through to Christmas Eve – just for something different to the usual sugar-loaded baking countdowns!! Today, something quick and easy for when asparagus is abundant and cheap:
Roasted Asparagus
Roasting is an excellent way to make any cook-able vegetable tastier with very little effort. All you need is a drizzle of oil, salt and pepper, then enough time in the oven so the vegetable cooks through to your taste (tender-crisp is the case for me, most of the time), and gets a bit of colour on it. With asparagus, we can really only get a little colour on the pointy end, being that they cook quickly (7 minutes, for medium size ones pictured), but even a bit of colour is still tastier than steaming!
What you need for roasted asparagus
Here’s what I use to roast asparagus. I know I only said salt and pepper, but garlic does make everything tastier!
How to make roasted asparagus
Now herein lies the reason why I make this a LOT as a quick side dish – how effortless this is to make: 1 & 2. Snap the woody ends off – just grab a few asparagus and snap off the bottom 3 – 5cm / 1 – 2″ which is the woody fibrous end that is not nice to eat. No need to pull out a knife here, it will naturally break at the point where the woody part finishes (as long as the asparagus is fresh and crisp, not old and soggy); 3. Drizzle with olive oil, toss with salt, pepper and garlic. I do this right on the tray. Yes, little bits of garlic won’t properly stick to the asparagus and no, that’s not a problem. You will still get flavour on the asparagus via the residual oil & asparagus juices on the tray; 4. Spread and bake – just 7 minutes in a hot 220°C/430°F oven! (Unless you’ve got thicker ones, then it will be closer to 10 to 12 minutes) 5. Optional lemon – I like to squeeze over lemon juice while hot because it absorbs some of the flavour, then just give it a quick toss; 6. Pile onto serving plate and if using the optional parmesan, just grate it straight over. Done! Serve as a quick side with anything, from roasts to fish, prawns to chicken. Because it cooks so quickly, it’s a good vegetable side dish for roasts because the asparagus can be roasted while, say, a roast chicken is resting before carving it up. Add it to the side of a breakfast fry up, or smear a piece of toast with ricotta then pile on the asparagus. And another way to serve this is with poached egg and Hollandaise Sauce. Albeit you often see this combination with plain steamed asparagus, imagine it with ROASTED garlic asparagus! Knock-your-socks-off amazing! Serve it just like that as lovely starter, or with a slice of toasted crusty bread for brunch. – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
Life of Dozer
He’s practically camouflaged! These salads are in addition to my regular 3 new recipes a week. Because aren’t you bored of the usual tomato-cucumber-lettuce garden salad routine?? Click here to see all the Holiday Salad Marathon recipes to date, or sign up for instant updates and you’ll receive a free email alert whenever I publish a new salad! 🙂
