'Tis asparagus season on the North Fork… Chef Arie Pavlou at my restaurant, Comtesse Therese Bistro, has got some beautiful purplish-blue asparagus from one of the local farms (see photo). He says they’ll be available throughout May and June.

Arie has been tying the asparagus into bunches of about a half dozen stalks, blanching them, then serving them with homemade olive bread and a bit of cubed local potato (see photo).

My recipe here is a little different. The other night I was at a Mano restaurant, and co-owner and chef Tom Schaudel had prepared an asparagus dish with a fried egg on top, Italian-style. I’ve made it at home like that many times, usually sautéing the asparagus in the frying pan and frying the egg. However, taking inspiration from both of these sources, I decided to blanch the asparagus and use some cubed potatoes as Chef Arie does, still putting a fried egg on top.

Ingredients:

• Local asparagus stalks, half a dozen per person
• String for tying
• Eggs, one per person – try using local eggs
• Butter and olive oil for frying the egg
• Local potatoes, about a half potato per person for garnish, or one potato per person if using as a substitute for the olive bread
• Good olive bread or another really good bread, one slice per person. If you don’t have really good bread, skip the bread
• Salt and pepper
• Fresh local chives for garnish

Peel and boil the potatoes, cooking until soft. When cooked, cut them into cubes about ¾ inch square.

Tie the asparagus stalks with string into bundles of a half-dozen stalks each.  Boil water then blanch the asparagus bunches for about 4 minutes.

Fry the eggs sunny-side up in a frying pan with some butter and olive oil. Some recipes call for all butter, and you pour the browned butter over the dish at the end, but I like the olive oil and butter combination in this dish. I’ve always wanted to make this with local duck eggs, but chicken eggs are fine, too.

Put a slice of olive bread on the plate. Put a tied-up bundle of asparagus neatly on top of the bread, then cut the string. If you don’t have good olive bread, lay the asparagus bundle on top of a little pile of the cubed potato instead.  Put a few extra potato cubes around for garnish.

Put the fried egg on top. Add salt and pepper and chopped fresh chives.