Italian Asparagus Veloute with Parmigiano Reggiano | Vellutata di Asparagi al Parmigiano Reggiano
A vellutata is judged on two things and nothing else: whether it still tastes of the vegetable it was made from, and whether it is smooth enough that the spoon leaves no grain behind. Asparagus makes both harder than any other spring vegetable. Its flavour is volatile and disappears with long cooking, its colour turns from green to olive within minutes of overcooking, and its stalks are full of the very fibres that a blender cannot break.
The method here answers each of those problems separately. The stalks are simmered briefly in a small amount of stock rather than drowned in it, a single small potato supplies body so that no cream is needed, the tips are blanched apart and kept aside so the plate has something green and firm on it, and the whole thing is passed through a fine mesh cone before the Parmigiano goes in. The cheese is stirred in off the heat, because Parmigiano boiled into a soup splits and turns stringy.
Yield: 4 first course servings. Prep: 20 minutes. Cook: 30 minutes. Total: about 50 minutes. Difficulty: intermediate. Course: primo. Region: northern Italy, from Veneto through Lombardy to Emilia.
The Story
Asparagus is one of the few vegetables in Italy that carries its own place names. Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto has grown white asparagus on its sandy riverside soil since at least the sixteenth century, and the town still runs a market where the bundles are tied with willow shoots rather than rubber. Cimadolmo, Badoere and Zambana all hold their own protected designations, and in Piedmont the pale pink tipped spears of Santena have been sent to Turin since the Savoy court ate them. The season is short, roughly from the middle of March to the middle of June, and Italian cooking treats it as a calendar event rather than an ingredient that happens to be available.
The pairing with Parmigiano Reggiano is older than the soup. Asparagi alla parmigiana, spears laid in a dish, covered with grated cheese and butter and browned, appears in Emilian and Lombard cooking long before anyone thought to blend a vegetable. The logic is the same one used here: asparagus is low in fat and slightly bitter, aged cheese is fat, salty and full of glutamate, and the two together make a complete dish out of something that is otherwise just a green vegetable.
Ingredients
For the vellutata
Green asparagus, 2 lb (900 g)
Yukon Gold potato, peeled and diced small, 5 oz (140 g)
Leek, white part only, thinly sliced, 1 medium
Extra virgin olive oil, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Vegetable stock, light and unsalted, 3 1/2 cups (830 ml), kept hot
Fresh thyme, 1 sprig
Fine sea salt, 1 tsp (6 g), plus more to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, 1/4 tsp (0.5 g)
For finishing
Parmigiano Reggiano, aged 24 months, finely grated, 1/3 cup (35 g)
Parmigiano Reggiano, shaved with a peeler, 1 oz (28 g)
Extra virgin olive oil, fruity and mild, 2 tbsp (30 ml)
Lemon juice, 1 tsp (5 ml), optional
Coarse salt and ice water, for blanching and chilling the tips
Preparation
Step 1
Snap the woody ends off each spear where it breaks on its own, then cut the top 1 1/2 inches (4 cm) away and set the tips aside. Peel the lower third of the thicker stalks with a vegetable peeler, since that skin is the single largest source of the fibre that survives blending. Slice the remaining stalks into pieces about 1/2 inch (1 cm) long.
Step 2
Bring a wide pan of water to a rolling boil and salt it heavily, about 1 tbsp (18 g) per quart. Drop in the tips and cook them 60 to 90 seconds, no longer, then lift them straight into ice water. The salt is not seasoning here, it is what keeps the chlorophyll from being stripped by the acids the asparagus releases, and the ice water stops the residual heat that would otherwise turn them olive on the tray.
Step 3
Warm the olive oil in a heavy pot over low heat and add the sliced leek with a pinch of the salt. Sweat it for about 6 minutes, stirring, until it is completely translucent and has given up its moisture. It must not take any colour at all. Browned leek tastes sweet and caramelized in a way that reads as onion soup, and in a pale green vellutata it also dulls the colour. Add the diced potato and cook 3 minutes more.
Step 4
Add the sliced asparagus stalks, the thyme sprig and only 3 cups (710 ml) of the hot stock, holding the rest back. This is the decision that determines whether the soup is concentrated or thin, and it cannot be undone later: liquid can always be added but never removed. Bring it to a gentle simmer, cover partly and cook 10 to 12 minutes, until a stalk crushes easily against the side of the pot but the pieces are still green rather than khaki.
Step 5
Take the pot off the heat and remove the thyme, whose stem will otherwise shred into splinters in the blender. Let the soup lose its violent heat for two or three minutes. Lift the solids into the blender jug with a slotted spoon and add just enough of the cooking liquid to cover them, keeping the rest aside.
Step 6
Blend on the highest setting for a full minute. Vent the lid, hold a folded towel over it and start slowly, because hot liquid expands violently in a sealed jug. Then thin the puree back with the reserved cooking liquid, a ladle at a time, until it flows off a spoon in a broad ribbon and coats the back of it evenly.
Step 7
Pass the whole thing through a fine mesh cone, pressing it through with a small ladle and scraping the outside of the cone with a spatula. What stays behind is pale fibre and skin, a couple of tablespoons of it, and none of the flavour. Return the strained soup to a clean pot over the lowest heat.
Step 8
Bring the soup to just below a simmer, then take it off the heat entirely and scatter in the finely grated Parmigiano while whisking. It must not boil once the cheese is in. Parmigiano is a low moisture cheese with a tight protein network, and at boiling point that network contracts and expels its fat, leaving strings in the soup and a slick on the surface. Whisk in 1 tbsp (15 ml) of the olive oil the same way, then taste for salt and add the lemon juice only if the soup reads flat and heavy.
Plating
Warm the bowls, and warm them properly. A vellutata thickened with potato starch tightens measurably as it cools, so a soup that was correct in the pot can arrive at the table stiff simply because it lost twelve degrees on the way. Wide shallow bowls with a broad flat base are better than deep ones: they show the surface, which is the whole visual argument of the dish, and they let the aroma reach the diner instead of trapping it.
Ladle about 1 cup (240 ml) into each bowl and let it settle flat before touching it. Lay four or five of the blanched tips across one side rather than in the centre, pointing the same way, so the eye reads them as one deliberate gesture instead of scattered garnish. Add the Parmigiano shavings against them, two or three per bowl and no more, and finish with a thin thread of the remaining olive oil and a single turn of black pepper.
Professional Technique
The technical problem specific to asparagus is that its flavour and its colour are destroyed by different things. The aroma comes largely from sulphur compounds and from a group of volatile pyrazines that simply evaporate, so every extra minute of simmering costs flavour that no amount of seasoning replaces. The colour is chlorophyll, and chlorophyll is destroyed by acid, which asparagus releases as it cooks. Cooking the stalks in a partly covered pot for a short time protects the aroma, while blanching the tips in heavily salted water and shocking them protects the colour where it actually shows.
The second technique is starch management. A single small potato, around 5 oz (140 g) against 2 lb (900 g) of asparagus, supplies enough gelatinized starch to hold the suspension together and to give the soup body against the tongue. Push that quantity up and the starch granules swell and rupture under the blade, releasing long chains that read as gluey rather than velvety, and the potato begins to taste of itself. This is why the vellutata needs no cream. Cream would round the soup, but it would also flatten the bitterness that makes asparagus worth eating.
Texture and Moisture Control
The consistency to aim for is one that pours from the ladle in an unbroken ribbon and coats the back of a spoon in a thin even layer through which the metal is still faintly visible. Thinner than that and the soup separates in the bowl, with a watery halo forming at the rim within a minute. Thicker and it sits in a mound and stops behaving like a primo. Judge it hot, in the pot, and judge it again in a warm bowl, because those two readings are not the same.
The tips are a texture element and not a decoration. Blanched for a minute and a half they keep an audible snap against the velvet of the soup, which is the only textural contrast in the bowl and the reason the dish does not feel monotonous by the fourth spoonful. Left in the water for four minutes they go limp and there is nothing to bite. Drain them well before plating, since a few drops of blanching water carried into the bowl will thin a ring of the soup around them and show as a pale halo.
Professional Mise en Place
The whole soup can be built to the point just before the cheese and held, which is what makes this a practical restaurant primo. Only the final warming, the Parmigiano and the plating happen to order.
Equipment and tools
High speed blender, which produces a finer suspension than an immersion blender on fibrous vegetables
Fine mesh conical strainer and a small ladle to press with
Heavy bottomed pot for sweating and simmering, wide rather than tall
Wide pan and a bowl of ice water for the tips
Prepared ahead
Tips blanched, shocked and drained, up to 6 hours ahead, held at cool room temperature
Soup cooked, blended and strained, up to 1 day ahead, cooled fast and refrigerated without the cheese
Parmigiano grated fine for the soup and shaved for the garnish, kept separate and covered
Stock hot and held, with a small amount reserved for adjusting consistency
Service setup
Soup base warm over low heat, whisked occasionally, never allowed to simmer
Bowls warmed, since the soup thickens as it cools in the bowl
Tips, shavings, finishing oil and pepper mill lined up at the pass
Grated Parmigiano added only at the moment the bowls are called for
Chef Tips
Buy asparagus by feel rather than by price. The cut end should be moist and pale, not dried and hollow, the spear should snap rather than bend, and the tips should be tight and dry. Asparagus loses sugar to respiration faster than almost any vegetable after harvest, which is why a bundle that has sat for four days tastes grassy and thin no matter how it is cooked.
Taste the soup before the Parmigiano and again after. A vellutata that is correctly seasoned before the cheese is added will be too salty afterwards, because 24 month Parmigiano carries around 1.6 percent salt and a third of a cup is a real quantity. Salt to roughly three quarters of where you want to end up, then finish with the cheese and correct.
Common Mistakes
Adding all the stock at once. This is the single most common error in any vellutata and it cannot be corrected. Once the soup is thin the only route back is reduction, which costs aroma and colour. Start with 3 cups (710 ml), blend, and add the rest only if it is needed.
Boiling the soup after the Parmigiano goes in. The cheese splits, throws its fat to the surface and leaves visible strings through the bowl. Take the pot off the heat before the cheese goes anywhere near it, and whisk it in with the soup hot but still.
Skipping the strainer. No blender breaks asparagus fibre completely, and what survives is exactly what interrupts the velvet on the tongue. Two minutes with a fine mesh cone removes a couple of tablespoons of pale fibre and nothing else.
Blanching the tips in unsalted water. Heavily salted water holds the chlorophyll and cooks the tips fast. In plain water they cook slower, lose colour and end up drab against the soup. Salt the water as you would for pasta, and shock them in ice.
Wine Pairing
Soave Superiore DOCG: Garganega grown on the volcanic soils east of Verona gives a white with pronounced almond bitterness on the finish, and that bitterness runs alongside the natural bitterness of asparagus instead of trying to cancel it. There is enough texture in a Superiore to stand against the fat of the Parmigiano and enough acidity to keep the bowl from feeling rich by the halfway point.
Lugana DOC: Turbiana from the southern shore of Lake Garda is broader and rounder than most Italian whites, with a saline mineral core and a slow citrus finish. That combination of weight and salinity is very close to what the dish itself does, matching the body of the soup while the salt in the wine echoes the aged cheese rather than adding to it.
Collio Friulano DOC: The Friulian classic, and the wine most often poured with asparagus in its own region for good reason. It carries a distinct green almond and field herb character that meets the vegetal side of the soup head on, and its acidity is firm without being sharp, which suits a dish finished with olive oil rather than cream.
Franciacorta DOCG: The sparkling option, and a serious one. The bubbles and the bottle age autolytic character cut cleanly through the fat of the cheese and the finishing oil, resetting the palate in a way a still wine cannot. Choose a Brut rather than a Satin, since the lower dosage and firmer mousse handle the salinity of the Parmigiano better.
Storage & Reheating
Store the soup base without the Parmigiano. Cool it quickly, spread in a shallow container rather than left deep in the pot, and refrigerate it in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Cheese stirred into a soup that is then chilled and rewarmed will almost always break on the second heating, so the cheese is always a service step. The blanched tips keep 2 days refrigerated in a sealed container lined with paper, and the shavings should be cut fresh.
Reheat over low heat, stirring, and stop as soon as the surface trembles. The soup will have thickened noticeably in the refrigerator as the potato starch retrogrades, so loosen it with hot stock or water, added a spoonful at a time, until it ribbons off the spoon again. Then take it off the heat and whisk in the grated Parmigiano as if it were the first service. Do not reheat a portion that already has cheese in it for a second time.
Nutrition
Per serving, based on 4 first course portions:
Calories: 290 kcal
Total Fat: 18 g
Saturated Fat: 5 g
Trans Fat: 0 g
Unsaturated Fat: 12 g
Cholesterol: 18 mg
Sodium: 720 mg
Total Carbohydrates: 21 g
Fiber: 6 g
Total Sugars: 6 g
Added Sugars: 0 g
Protein: 13 g
Lactose: 0.2 g
Principal micronutrients: folate, vitamin K, vitamin C, calcium, phosphorus, potassium
These figures are estimates. Most of the salt in the blanching water is discarded rather than eaten, and the sodium total depends almost entirely on how much Parmigiano reaches the bowl.
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