Pistachio Crusted Asparagus with Feta

I had a little taste of Asheville, North Carolina waiting for me when I returned to New Orleans last week.   It wasn’t a warm mochas or drinkable caramel, sadly… but those are fleeting anyhow.  I found my friend Ashley’s book Handmade Gatherings waiting for my in my mailbox!  The very same Ashley that writes about chickens and bees, and had me in a stone-bottomed river bed pretending to be warm for a Spring picnic photoshoot.  Needles to say, Ashley is always welcome in my world.  I usually just need boots, a sweater, and an empty stomach.

I found this recipe flipping through the Spring pages of Handmade Gatherings.  Asparagus meets pistachios.  Roasted tender and crunchy.  Green on green.  Salty and fresh.  From the recipe title alone I knew it would be exactly right.

Spot on!  This is dish is all balance and heart.  Good timing.  I was just starting to miss those endless waves of green-blooming Blue Ridge Mountains.  Asparagus will step in where the mountain-longing creeps in.

Let’s get started (edit).  Asparagus is deliciously appropriate these days.  I like these big-boy stalks for this recipe.  The bigger the asparagus, the more pistachios stick!

Stalks are rinsed, trimmed, and lined up in a single layer… a mostly single layer.

Off to the oven we go.  The stalks should be bone-dry before drizzled with olive oil.

It takes a really long time to shell pistachios for a recipe.  It’s weird.  Like you’re forced to eat every other nut that you shell.

It takes hours.  Good luck getting there.

Once the nuts are shelled, they’re pulverized in a food processor.  Good and ground.  Salt is added.

I’m still getting used to this view.  It feels like an extra treat to have new cookbooks join me.

Also… so many parades outside.  So many.

Drizzled in olive oil and crusted big-time.

The colors alone tell you that asparagus and pistachios are a match made in heaven.

While the asparagus and pistachio roast, I made the vinaigrette.  It’s simple and zippy:  olive oil, lemon vinegar, and honey.  Salt and pepper.  Easy on the salt.  Heavy on the pepper.

Fresh from the oven the roasted vegetables are drizzled with vinaigrette and topped with feta and fresh parsley.

Just like that this asparagus is everything.

The stalks are warm, tender, and just slightly sweet coated in a salty pistachio crunch.  Feta is cold, crumbled, and super salt.  Parsley adds a kick of fresh and bright, complimenting the lemon in the vinaigrette.  It’s really wonderfully balanced in both flavor and texture.

I know it’s just asparagus… but this dish is totally hard to share.

Consider pouring yourself a glass of chilled pink wine and just getting down with the entire pan.  It really is hard to resist.