Asparagus Ragout (for a transitional season)

This dish has spring ingredients such as asparagus and peas, but it still has some winter ingredients in it, too, such as chard, carrots, and mushrooms. The recipe calls for chervil, an herb related to parsley, but I couldn't find any. The alternative was a mix of parsley and tarragon. I got lazy and just used tarragon - to great effect. I think I used almost twice as much as it called for, and it gave the dish this wonderful anise flavor.

This was my first time making buerre blanc (white butter, in french), a butter sauce. You really can't go wrong with butter. This sauce goes on top of the veggies and broth. You're supposed to serve this in individual bowls with a dollop of sauce on each, but I made this for a potluck, so I just put it in one big, pretty bowl and put little dollops all over the place. It's a beautiful dish with all the vegetables. I ate the leftovers for lunch several days in a row and it was delicious every time.

The recipe has you cook lots of vegetables separately in separate pans. I'll walk you through it the way I made it (the way the recipe recommends), but then I'll give you my recommendation about how to make this easier and have less cleanup at the end. My kitchen was a wreck when people arrived for the potluck. Thank goodness they like me for who I am and don't judge me based on a messy kitchen. :-)

This dish took about an hour. Here's how to get started:

Make the buerre blanc first. Put 1/4 cup white wine vinegar, 1/4 cup dry white wine, 2 T. diced shallot, and a pinch of salt in a saucepan. Simmer until only 2 T. remain. While it is simmering, cut 6-8 T. cold butter into small pieces. Turn off the heat and whisk in the butter pieces a couple at a time until it is all incorporated. The heat from the pan melts the butter bits and incorporates it into a thick white sauce. Season with a little pepper and set aside.

Then start the ragout: Slice the leaves off 1 bunch of chard. Cut the leaves into ribbons about an inch wide. Trim the stems into even planks and lice into strips about 3/8 inch wide and 3 inches long. (I think this is a little too long for bite sized pieces.) Bring 2-3 cups water to a boil, add some salt, and simmer the chard stems for a few minutes. Lay the leaves over the top and cook until tender, a few more minutes. Set aside.

Wash 8-12 slender carrots, and cut them in half lengthwise. (She says to leave them this size. I cut them into 3 inch pieces, which were a little too long.) Chop one small onion or leek (approx. 1/3 cup chopped). Wash 1 1/2 pounds asparagus and snapp off the tough tends. Cut it into 3 inch lengths. Heat 1 T. butter and 1 T. olive oil in a wide skillet with a lid. Cook the onion and carrots over medium-high heat for a few minutes to brown them a bit, then reduce the heat to medium. Add 1/2 cup dry white wine and let most of it sizzle away. Add 1 cup water and the asparagus. Season with salt and reduce the heat even more, cover, and cook until the asparagus and carrots are nearly tender (about 6 minutes.) Add 1/4 pound edible-pod peas, such as snow peas. Turn off the heat.

Heat another tablespoon of butter and olive oil over high heat. When the butter foams, add the mushrooms and quickly stir them about. Saute until they've browned a bit. Reduce the heat to medium and continue cooking until they've released and then reabsorbed their juices a bit. (About 8 minutes total.) Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Loosely arrange the vegetables into 4 pasta bowls. Distribute the chard and stems amoung them, then spoon several tablespoons of juice into each bowl. Add a dollop of the buerre blanc to each bowl, cover with the mushrooms, and garnish with the herbs.

Things I'd do differently next time: I'd cook the chard, and then set it aside in a bowl, reserving the cooking water in a jar in case I needed it for the broth later on. Then I'd use the same pan to cook the carrots, onions, asparagus and peas along with the broth. I would dump all this on top of the chard. Then I'd use the same pan to cook the mushrooms. I'd put the mushrooms in a small bowl and return all the other veggies and broth to the pan and warm through. I'd put this in individual bowls (or one big bowl), add the buerre blanc, then the mushrooms, then the herbs. This would cut down on the number of skillets to wash and the chard wouldn't be cold when you served it.

Alternatively, you could set aside the chard, and then cook pan of carrots, etc. and the pan of mushrooms at the same time. After you've turned off the heat to the carrots, you could add the chard in with the warm veggies and juice and then combine everything. This would cut out one pan and speed up the process a bit. You'd have to have all your veggies chopped first.

Approximate cost to prepare:

1/4 cup white wine vinegar - $.40
3/4 cup white wine - $1.50
2 T. shallot - $.40
8 T. butter - $.75
1 bunch chard - $2.50
one small onion - $.20
8-12 slender carrots - $2.00
1 1/2 pounds asparagus - $5.00
1/4 pound snow peas - $1.25
3/4 pound cremini mushrooms - $3.00
2 T. chervil or a mixture of parsley and tarragon - $.50 (I used half a bunch of tarragon, at $1.29 a bunch = $.65)
TOTAL - $17.00 for 4 or more people. 7 people had a serving of this at a potluck, and then I had it for lunch for 3 days. That's more like 10 servings.