A Big Little Recipe has the smallest-possible ingredient list and big everything else: flavor, creativity, wow factor. Psst—we don’t count water, salt, black pepper, and certain fats (specifically, 1/2 cup or less of olive oil, vegetable oil, and butter), since we’re guessing you have those covered. This week is an ode to asparagus.
Asparagus is the chameleon of springtime. It’s happy to be blitzed into a creamy pesto. Or shaved and tossed with everything green. Or even turned into a savory pancake.
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But to me, the best thing to do with asparagus is not much at all.
Though boiling may not be cool, it is the surest way to express a vegetable’s true vegetable-iness (second only to leaving it raw). With its tall, lanky build, asparagus needs just a few minutes in hot water to go from crunchy to crisp-tender—from green to greenest.
Add a drizzle of olive oil and pinch of flaky salt and you have the perfect side. But, at least once in its short season, asparagus deserves to be more than a side. It deserves to be dinner, period.
All we need is a supporting cast, to round out the meal without outshining our star. That’s where these four ingredients come in: anchovies, bread crumbs, eggs, and Calabrian chiles.
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If you’re raising your eyebrows at anchovies, you won’t even know they’re there. At the same time, you’d miss them if they weren’t. Minced-beyond-recognition anchovies make many things better, but especially olive oil–fried bread crumbs. Thanks to their magic ingredient, the crumbs have a salty, umami complexity that evokes the thrifty Italian trick of using bread crumbs instead of grated cheese.
The eggs are soft-boiled, with just-set whites and jammy yolks. You could slice them in half and neatly place them atop the asparagus. But I much prefer to add the eggs whole, then smash them with my fork into haphazard pieces (a technique I learned from Smitten Kitchen). Instead of staying in one place, the yolk “sauce” gets everywhere, which is exactly where we want it. A little Calabrian chile paste, randomly dabbed onto the egg bits and bobs, goes a long way. It’s spicy, sure, but it also adds brightness and acidity and perks up the entire dish.
This could serve up to four, if you have other components at the table—maybe soup or salad or both. But my husband and I ate up the two pounds of asparagus with forks and steak knives, leaving only a handful of crumbs behind. We saved them in a container and finished them the next day. On more asparagus, of course.
If you’re a Big Little fan, maybe you’re wondering: Where’s this week’s video? We’re taking a quick hiatus—yep, just like a TV show—to cook up the next season of episodes, premiering May 28. They’re gonna be bigger (and littler) and better than ever. Stay tuned!
