There was a little bit of synchronicity across the Dorista-sphere this month. While the French Fridays crew was tasked with making asparagus soup this week, the Tuesdays with Dorie crowd was busy stuffing brioche pockets with asparagus tips. Making both on the same day meant not having to worry about how to use the leftover asparagus stalks – they went straight into the soup pot.

Making both recipes on the same day also meant I was a little tired, so when my photos stubbornly refused to admit that my soup was green (not the brown you see above), I didn’t have enough gumption left to keep playing with the lighting. What you see isn’t always what you get.

This soup was a little fussy (I’d really recommend getting thick-stalked asparagus, rather than the thin ones I found), as there was a lot of allium-chopping and asparagus-peeling to do. Once the prep was done, though, it was smooth sailing. I especially loved that the scraps and ends of the asparagus are used to intensify the flavour of the soup and that the base of the soup is the blanching water, which intensifies the asparagus flavour even more. The soup was good on its own, but really shone with a spoonful of Greek yogurt mixed in. Very much worth all that prep work.

I also caught up on another recipe that’s worth a little fuss, the financiers from a few weeks ago. These are very worth the time it takes to brown the butter and to heat the egg whites with sugar and almond flour. I gave the batter a good, long rest in the fridge and the cakes came out beautifully. My grandmother’s little cake pans were the perfect size for these. It was nice to have an excuse to use them. My only difficulty was deciding what to do with the six egg yolks that were left over. I found this egg yolk cookie recipe and adapted it by exchanging a cup of the all purpose flour for whole wheat and using a little lemon juice and orange zest in place of the extracts. (You can see them in the background of my financiers photo.)

There are no more strenuous kitchen projects in my immediate future. I’ve just got some homemade pistachio oil in the refrigerator, awaiting next week’s recipe. Until then, I’m going to enjoy the weekend, hanging out with friends and sampling goodies at Eat Vancouver this weekend. I hope you’ve all got some lovely weekend plans lined up, too.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Asparagus Soup. Everyone’s posts on Financiers can be found here.