Roasted Asparagus à la Goldenrod

Inspiration for this dish came from a swank hotel's Sunday Brunch I helped develop, execute and supervise in Atlanta in the early 1980s.  We used to bring this dish out on huge silver serving trays.  It is visually arresting but relatively inexpensive and easy to make, perfect fare for a commercial brunch buffet that routinely served a thousand patrons every week, and three-thousand or more on the two largest Sunday Brunch days of the year, Easter and Mother's Day.  I'm not sure the origination of the recipe per se, but it was meant to be eaten over toast points.

But Eggs à la Goldenrod has been around for some time, inspired by a Boston cooking school's cookbook in 1869 with a recipe called, Creamed Eggs Over Toast,  It was quickly adopted by the city's resident Catholic families as a traditional menu item for an Easter Sunday Brunch.  The "goldenrod" part came later, which was merely taking the yolks from hard boiled eggs and crumbling them over the dish as garnish and to increase its visual appeal. The goldenrod reference, named after the perennial garden plant, is self-evident. Perhaps somewhere along the way because Easter is so closely tied to the onset of spring, someone got the idea of using the goldenrod method on this quintessential spring vegetable.  

Asparagus itself, of course, has been around for centuries, from the ancient Persian and Greek cultures to Roman times, asparagus grew to be thought of as a healing, medicinal vegetable as well as an aphrodisiac. The name comes from Latin corrupted to the word sperage, meaning "sparrow grass," and asparagus indeed does have the unique property of removing ammonia from the body.  Some people can attest to this when they detect a certain odor upon urination after eating asparagus the previous day.

But that's not at all appetizing, is it?  What is appetizing is this recipe, my take on the classic goldenrod sauce, which was a Bechamel seasoned with rosemary, parsley or chives and perhaps a dash of Worcestershire or sherry.  I preferred a more savory sauce with Gruyere and Parmesan cheeses as the flavor basis, and as with the more traditional recipe, chopped egg whites added at the last minute.

Ingredients
2 lb fresh asparagus
olive oil for drizzling
2 cups heavy cream
2 hard boiled eggs
1/2 cup Gruyere cheese, shredded
1/2 cup Parmesan Cheese, shredded
1/8 tsp fine grain sea salt
1/8 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

The Recipe
Pre-heat the oven to 400F degrees.

Prepare the boiled eggs by peeling them, and separating the whites from the yolks. Make a rough chop of the whites and a fine mince of the yolks. Set aside the white and yolks in separate bowls in the refrigerator, covered with a damp paper towel or paper napkin so they don't dry out and so the yolks don't become discolored.

Prepare the asparagus by separating the woody parts of the stem from the more tender parts of the spear.  This is done by holding both ends of a spear and bending it until it snaps and breaks at the sweet-spot.  You can then use that as a guide to simply cut off the balance of the asparagus spears at roughly the same point, making all spears more or less the same length.

Lay out the asparagus spears on a sheet pan or cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil and drizzle liberal amounts of olive oil over them. Roast in the oven until the spears are tender and becoming slightly browned, 10-15 minutes.

In the meantime over medium high heat and in a small saucepan, heat the heavy cream until just beginning to simmer, then first add the Gruyere cheese followed by the Parmesan cheese, whisking all the while to aid the cheese in thoroughly melting into the sauce. The sauce will thicken on its own after adding the Parmesan cheese, but do not allow the sauce to simmer without whisking. Remove the saucepan from the heat.  Add the chopped egg whites, salt and pepper and stir to combine.

Lay out the roasted asparagus onto a serving platter.  Top with the cheese cream sauce, then garnish liberally with the chopped egg yolks.  Serve immediately.