The Guild Fanucci

Faheud’s Cookbook, Page 04
Asparagus and White Cheddar sauce
© 2004 George Reed

This recipe is very much about timing and instinct. You can achieve a good result with bad luck on timing, but if you hit it all just right you can make a true believer out of someone who hates cheese and is known to spot asparagus on the menu and flee into the night—napkin tucked into their collar.

These basic principals will serve you well as you get into the actual recipe:

• There is no such thing as a fast, hands-off white cheddar sauce. There **is** such a thing as a fast, hands-off gooey, scorched, hideous reason to go on a nice long fast. Nuff said.
• Over-cooked asparagus belongs in a tin can, loving sealed, blazoned with colorful labels, and buried wherever they left Jimmy Hoffa. Both are equally nice to have show up at dinner time.

Ingredients to acquire:

• 1 ‘bunch’ of asparagus per four diners. If they start drooling on hearing this is on the menu, double that or you’ll have lots of asparagus kidnapping during dinner and that is less than fortunate.
• 1 steamer pot—or 1 Dutch oven that has that cool, multi-layered metal bottom that allows you to cook any veggie with like 2 tablespoons of water.
• 1 sprig of fresh oregano or sweet basil
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 stick salted butter.
• 4 tablespoons flour
• 1 pint half and half
• 1 pint whole milk - Keep the 2% and skim milk for your Wheaties, or whatever, please. If you try to use soy milk, the saucepan will fly up, smack you on the forehead and run away with the spoon…
• 1 pound, finely grated white cheddar cheese. You can use yellow cheddar, but the sauce will not be as creamy. Its rather important that the cheese have been near a cow at some point in its existence, so if you use Velveeta, I will find you.

Preparing the Asparagus:

1. Wash the asparagus thoroughly.
2. Break off the bottom end—it will naturally split at the point where the stalk becomes woody. Nothing yorks up a great cheese sauce like a mouthful of splinters…
3. Place in as little water as you can get away with based on your pan/pot type.
4. Heat until the water is turning to steam. Maintain enough heat to produce a very hot steam and cook until the asparagus is bright green and is just thinking about being tender. Remove from heat. It will finish tenderizing on its own.

White Cheddar Sauce

1. In advance, grate up 1 pound of medium sharp, white cheddar cheese. You may have some trouble keeping the snackers out of it, but the consistent and loving application of spoon to knuckles tends to minimize the damage.
2. Place a Dutch oven on the stove over low-medium heat with the butter to melt. You are after a slow approach to melted and sizzling as we would like the fat to remain in solution. If the butter burns, start over. You cannot fix it, even if you are Houdini’s last heir.
3. As butter is melted and beginning to sizzle, mix in the flour 1 tablespoon at a time, ensuring it is a smooth, lump-free mix. Continue stirring on the med-low heat until it is sizzling nicely.
4. Add a little half and half, mix smooth, add more, mix smooth, and so on until all the half and half is added and there are no lumps. This sauce is good even with lumps, but approaches magical if it’s silky smooth.
5. Add in the milk and continue stirring over med-low heat until it is steaming hot. DO. NOT. BOIL.
6. As the lovely cream sauce is now hot and steamy, it is time to begin slowly stirring in the cheese, allowing it to melt without grains or lumps before adding more.
7. The constant folding action keeps the silky smooth texture going, even as the whole pound of cheddar is added.
8. When all the cheese is thoroughly melted, take off the heat and serve as soon as is possible.

This sauce is delightful as shown above, also heavenly over broccoli or cauliflower, and remarkable as a base for cheesy scalloped potatoes.

You can also take this sauce, pour it over four boneless chicken breasts, cook for 40 minutes at 325 degrees and deploy the lot over some buttered egg noodles.
I actually got some interesting proposals with that one once.

Believe it or not, you might have leftovers. SAVE the sauce. Unlike many cheese and/or cream sauces, this WILL reheat well. Either very low power nuke til it is warm, or for best results, the old double-boiler is your friend.

Extra hint: You can add flour to the butter and make a larger quantity. If your sauce is too thick after adding the milk, add more milk. If its way too thin, make more flour/butter paste, mix in milk til smooth, and add to the sauce.

The only non-correctable errors are overcooking the vegetables destined to be shrouded in the sauce, or—heavens forbid and forgive your souls if you do it—scorching the sauce.

If the sauce starts to scorch, pour it into a different pan immediately.

Enjoy!