Recipe: Asparagus Flan

A Different Approach To Asparagus

An Easter meal always heralds Spring, even in the dreary doldrums of March.  When it is gray, cold, rainy, nothing is more hopeful  than perusing through books for my first celebration of the next seasons – the one with sunshine, flowers, and extra daylight,

I think the golden decade for Gourmet Magazine stretched from 1986 through 1996.  This appetizer appeared in one of their delightful seasonal centerfolds in the  1997 cookbook, which features recipes from the previous year.  I struggled to organize and catalog all the issues I had subscribed to, going  so far as to bind all the same months for 15 years in separate notebooks.  In the long run, it did not work out well.  But I deserve brownie points for putting them all into recycling.  I then collected just the yearly books that were produced from 1985 through 2006,  when I  finally gave up my subscription. Both my husband and I love wandering through all these retrospective cookbooks from Gourmet.  It makes for relaxing reading, getting inspired by the photos and occasionally discovering a recipe for which we already have the ingredients!

Kudos to Gail Zeigenthal,  the Executive Food Editor. for an incredibly rich period of inspiring dishes, including this one.  Everyone  who has come to our Easter meal has loved this recipe for a first course featuring local asparagus.