Pasta with asparagus

While on the subject of asparagus, this is another dish that's best with French asparagus, but I also make it with the Spanish stuff, or even, at a pinch, with asparagus flown in from Latin America at other times of year.

In Rome one sunny day, probably about twenty years ago, I had lunch alone in a restaurant just off the via Condotti. I chose farfalle with asparagus.

They mixed the asparagus with spring onion, cream and chervil. It seemed a bit bland to me (and stingy with the asparagus, as usual in restaurants) and I thought, as sometimes happens, I could probably do something similar but better myself. Here's what I've done ever since.

I use one bunch of green asparagus to make generous, main-course portions for two people. You could make more reasonably-sized portions for three, and no doubt a decent starter for four.

Cut off the bottom half of the stalks and blanch the top half for a few minutes in boiling water, with the fragile tips over the side of the pan, rather than in the water. Once it's blanched, drain it and cut it into short lengths.

Get a decent amount of butter foaming in a wide pan. Add Parma or San Daniele ham cut into strips - I guess, for one bunch of asparagus, about 125 g. Cook it gently and add the blanched asparagus, black pepper, grated nutmeg and chopped chives.

When the asparagus is tender, add cream. I use 200 g of crème fraîche or, as it's often (I don't know why) a bargain at the supermarket, Italian panna da cucina densa. When the cream has melted, turn the heat to low.

I measure pasta by the handful, rather than weight. I use two good handsful of farfalle per person. I reckon it works out at about 100 g per handful. 200 g per person is really quite a lot and makes, as I said above, generous, main-course portions.

When the pasta is done (I use De Cecco's, by the way, and follow the timings they give on the packet), drain it and mix it with the sauce. Stir in two or three tablespoons of grated parmesan and dish it up immediately.

At the end of the recipe on this blog for baked asparagus, I added the famous quotation from Proust. I later read that, if you don't like the smell of your urine after asparagus, you need only add a drop or two of turps to make it smell like violets. Fancy that!