From: Linda McCartney’s Home Cooking, p. 81
Steamed asparagus with a light and easy-to-make hollandaise sauce. Lovely with some new potaoes. Serves 2-3.
Through my husband’s persistence, we managed to get some fresh asparagus yesterday and enjoyed it with the “divine” sauce today. The first surprise in the recipe is the very short cooking time recommended for the asparagus. It leaves the spears still slightly crispy- a consistency I just love. It is surprising because in the 1980s and 90s, most veg was boiled until very soft- this is how I remember asparagus from my childhood. So Linda was again ahead of her time.
The second surprise was the light and very easy-to-make hollandaise sauce that does not use huge amounts of butter and does not require a double-boiler. Yet the result was a wonderful creamy sauce with a great taste.
I think I am quite a purist when it comes to asparagus- usually I would just serve fresh steamed asparagus with some melted butter and salt. For a change, I really liked the hollandaise sauce, especially because it was quite light and delicately flavoured. I did not like the onion bits and onion flavour in the sauce, though and would recommend not using any onion here. I would also just use plain water and no vegetable stock to keep the taste as pure as possible. This recipe is another one of the few recipes that call for real butter- just for the flavour.
Mopping up the rest of the sauce on my plate with some new potatoes was really divine 🙂
Gluten-Free: I used 25g of rice flour, which worked very well.