The asparagus looked great and was on sale, so I had to pick some up. While I like asparagus simply done, it is nice to spice things up now and again. I happened to have a blood orange in the fridge, so I thought it would dress up my green vegetable a bit. I had never bought a blood orange before, but I will be buying them again for sure. What a striking fruit! After slicing in and exposing the bright red flesh, I almost didn’t want to juice it and disturb its beauty.
Blood Orange Syrup
- Juice from one blood orange (mine yielded about 3/4 cup)
- Scant 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- Scant 1/4 teaspoon turbinado (or other) sugar
- 2 teaspoon olive oil
- A few turns of the pepper mill
- Zest from orange
- Place juice in small saucepan and let cook over medium for 5 minutes. Add sugar and salt and let it dissolve. Reduce heat to low and cook for another 5 minutes or until juice resembles a syrup. Stir in olive oil and season with pepper to taste. This will be salty…but you will not add any other salt so this will season the asparagus well.
Simple Indoor Grilled Asparagus
Heat a lightly oiled grill pan over medium-high. Cook for approximately 3-4 minutes on each side depending on size and preference. I like mine to be flexible, but still crisp.
Drizzle syrup over asparagus and garnish with the zest. I found the zest to be very mild, yet delicious–so feel free to garnish generously. I must admit I let my syrup reduce a little too much, so I had to move mine around to coat the spears.
In review, this little spontaneous creation was tasty, easy…and something different, which was what I was going for.
city food. country kitchen. 
