recipe
Asparagus and maltaise sauce
Seasonality is a quirky thing. If you get the moment just right, momentary culinary combinations that bring great joy can be found. Two of my absolute favourites are Seville orange and quince, and asparagus and blood orange.
Asparagus truly represents a seasonal vegetable. Even in this modern age, science can’t make it a year-round thing. It is also a vegetable that is at its very best when it is freshly picked, so eating asparagus out of season, after it has been flown halfway around the world, is quite frankly a waste of time and resources.
As a gardener, I find it an incredible vegetable to grow, where patience is rewarded with longevity. Once planted, it is best not to pick your asparagus for the first three years. This allows the “crown” to strengthen for its long life ahead. On the fourth year, start picking the spears and that “crown” will keep getting bigger and provide you with a yearly crop for at least the next 20 years.
Early spring also coincides with the last of the blood oranges. Blood oranges appear later in the winter citrus season, and hang on right up until the asparagus arrives. By a quirk of nature, the two are a timely and wonderful combination.
Hollandaise is a member of the classic French sauce brigade. It’s a little time-consuming – a bit of a workout while whisking the butter in – but the result is charming. As a “mother” sauce, it has at least 13 children, known as the derivatives. Many have names as charming as the results: sauce bavaroise, sauce divine and the sexiest of the family, sauce noisette, a lush sauce made with browned butter. But here, we are making sauce maltaise, a hollandaise made with blood oranges.
It is often said that sauce maltaise should be paired only with asparagus, either white or green. I have added here a little goat fromage frais (goat’s cheese), another classic friend of asparagus, as I find the slight acidity of the cheese perfectly complements the richness and oblique sweetness of the sauce.
And if you’re curious about the other quirk of seasonality, next winter the quinces I squirrel away at the end of autumn will be added to Seville orange marmalade to create another true wonder.
Serves 6
Time: 45 minutes preparation + cooking
- 175g unsalted butter, diced
- 3 egg yolks
- 1 tbsp cold water
- 1 tbsp fresh lemon juice
- grated rind of 1 blood orange and juice of 2 blood oranges
- salt and cayenne pepper, to taste
- 30-36 thick asparagus spears
- 200g goat fromage frais
- Melt the butter in a small saucepan over a low heat; do not boil. Skim off any foam and set aside.
- In a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water or in the top of a double boiler, whisk together the egg yolks, water, lemon juice, one tablespoon of the orange juice and season with salt.
- Place the saucepan or double boiler over a very low heat and whisk constantly until the mixture begins to thicken and the whisk starts to leave tracks on the base of the pan. Remove the pan from the heat.
- Whisk in the melted butter drop by drop until the sauce begins to thicken, then pour it in a little more quickly, leaving behind the milky solids at the base of the pan. Whisk in the orange rind and 30-60 millilitres of the orange juice. Season with salt and cayenne pepper and keep warm. This is best done by sitting it over a pan of warm water.
- Snap off the tough ends of the asparagus spears and trim to an equal length. If peeling, hold each spear gently by the tip, then using a vegetable peeler, strip off the peel and scales from just below the tip to the end. Rinse in cold water.
- Fill a large, deep, frying pan with five centimetres of water and bring to the boil over a medium-high heat. Add the asparagus and bring back to the boil, then simmer for three to five minutes, until just tender.
- Carefully transfer the spears to a large colander to drain, then lay them on a tea towel and pat dry. On individual plates, divide the goat fromage frais and smear into a circle, carefully place the asparagus on top and pour the sauce across the middle of the spears.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on October 15, 2022 as "Blood ties".
For almost a decade, The Saturday Paper has published Australia’s leading writers and thinkers. We have pursued stories that are ignored elsewhere, covering them with sensitivity and depth. We have done this on refugee policy, on government integrity, on robo-debt, on aged care, on climate change, on the pandemic.
All our journalism is fiercely independent. It relies on the support of readers. By subscribing to The Saturday Paper, you are ensuring that we can continue to produce essential, issue-defining coverage, to dig out stories that take time, to doggedly hold to account politicians and the political class.
There are very few titles that have the freedom and the space to produce journalism like this. In a country with a concentration of media ownership unlike anything else in the world, it is vitally important. Your subscription helps make it possible.
Select your digital subscription
Get the news you need
to your inbox.
