Asparagus Off!!

Tonight, it was Doctor Who Monday!! And we had an asparagus off. Our friend Carmen told us that she would like to see us make a delicious proscuitto wrapped asparagus recipe thing she had done before, so we decided to take her up on her challenge!

Then...

Well. Lets be frank. I like bacon. In my opinion, it is greater than everything and anything ever made. Bacon > Sliced bread... The moon landing... and definitely Proscuitto. So I said to Sam...

...It's a battle!

We decided to have a mini Iron Chef type thing tonight. I purchased the asparagus, we had a few other things on hand that we could use for the battle left over from previous adventures.

Proscuitto Wrapped Asparagus

What We Used:

• Asparagus
• Proscuitto
• Cream cheese
• Fresh basil
• Fresh chives
• 3 cloves garlic (what I used, you can use less or more! )

First of all, I trimmed the bottoms off the asparagus and washed them so that there was no clinging dirt.

I then put the cream cheese and the herbs and garlic into my handy dandy food processor and blended them together till they made a brilliant greenish herby cream cheese mix. That was spread onto the strips of proscuitto and wrapped around the asparagus spears. Easy!!

Bake the spears in either a Pyrex dish or a baking pan lined with tin foil, since it's a little messy. I had the oven pretty high since all we were doing was cooking the asparagus and crisping up the proscuitto a bit. Proscuitto is already cooked, after all.

Bacon Wrapped Asparagus

What We Used:

• Asparagus
• Bacon (I used thick sliced, but in retrospect thin might have been better)
• Mayonnaise
• Chipotle pepper spice
• Wierd squeeze tube of habanero and cayenne chilis
• Worchestershire sauce
  

In hindsight, I should have kept more accurate measurements since the Spicy Mayo also made a perfect chip dip.

Sam already prepped the Asparagus, so I didn't have to worry about those. I was too busy dumping the chipotle, squeeze tube chilis and Worchestershire sauce into mayo until it tasted right. And really, that's the key right there. Add as much or as little as you want until it tastes the way you want it to.

The bacon was just simply wrapped around the asparagus then put on a foil lined baking sheet and baked at 375. It needed to be turned a lot... more than the proscuitto did... and I was baking for longer at a lower temperature. At the end, when the bacon was starting to crisp and the asparagus was at my desired level of done-ness, I turned on the broiler to finish it off. Served with the mayo it was fantastic.

Verdict?

It was pretty much a tie. Both Sam and I liked the Bacon better, but some of the people there liked the Proscuitto since it's less fatty, and the herbaceous cheese was fantastic (if a bit salty). Both are fantastic appetizers, though.

Finally, no pictures tonight. I'll try to have them up tomorrow when I can grab Luke's camera. Until then, cheers!

-Sam and Jess