Sausage, Asparagus, and Mashed Potatoes

20121201:
Today I made Italian sausage with peppers, onions, and beer for the second time, added some asparagus, and completed the meal with some leftover mashed potatoes from Thanksgiving dinner.

This post is concerned with combining the three.

Assembly:
Step 1: I poured some Trader Joe's Honey Apple Butter onto the center of the plate and spread it out with a spoon.
Step 2: I took my ladle and scooped up the mashed potatoes. I had it fall slowly onto the center of the plate. I took a fork and scooped out the remaining mashed potatoes from the glassware and place the remains on top of the mound. This gave the mound a more textured look.
Step 3: I stacked the asparagus down onto the plate.
Step 4: I placed some sausages down. In hindsight, I'm glad some of the sausages were cut at steeper diagonals. This allowed for a nicer overlap. I tried to find a sausage end that would cap off the sausages nicely.
Step 5: I placed one more spear next to the sausages.
Step 6: I poured some of the sauce from the asparagus pan on top of the mashed potatoes.
Step 7: I garnished the top of the mashed potato with parsley.

Results:
The honey apple butter went well in the ensemble. Of course, I like sweet dishes.

The best part about this was I had the mashed potatoes, I knew I wanted to do the sausages, but including the asparagus just randomly occurred to me while roaming the supermarket. Of course they're a commonly included as a side vegetable at restaurants and they have a nice look to them, so perhaps the thought to include them wasn't as random as I've led myself to believe.

Together, the sausage, mashed potatoes, and asparagus made for a good variety of taste and texture. The sausages were sweet and mildly spicy; the mashed potatoes were creamy, provided some saltiness, and contained the mouthwatering sauteed onions; and finally the asparagus were crunchy, mostly sweet from the teriyaki, and had a hint of bitterness that occasionally revealed. Actually, the bitterness sensation might have been coming from the slightly burnt teriyaki sauce.

Overall, the dish was fun to put together and delicious to eat.

[20121202]

---

Relevant Links:
Mashed Potatoes
Italian Sausage with Peppers, Onions and Beer
Asparagus

Asparagus

20121201:
So I've begin to notice a pattern with many of the activities I enjoy: a certain degree of freedom and/or improvisation. Of course, in order to obtain more degrees of freedom and/or improvisation, one needs to learn and build more and more basics.

As applied specifically to this dish, it was important I learned a little bit about asparagus before ultimately doing whatever I wanted. Having done the research for the terminology after cooking the asparagus, I'm not sure there was a specific term for what I did.

Steps I Took:
I put some olive oil in a pan and let it heat up. Meanwhile, I chopped up two cloves of garlic and gathered what trace amounts of onion I had left lying around. I also sliced the bottoms of the asparagus off at a diagonal (aiming for a degree of 45 degrees or more from the width for a longer diagonal). For the spears that were extra long, I cut another diagonal about halfway down the spear. I threw the garlic, onion, and asparagus in the pan and set a timer for four minutes. Then, I poured some teriyaki sauce over the asparagus, at which point, the sugars began blackening.

At this point, I poured some liquid from the sausage dish into the pan. This was from my experience that the liquid would steam off and facilitate the cooking, but I was also hoping the liquid would slow down the burning. At four minutes I took the asparagus off the heat and achieved asparagus which were still crispy on the outside, but soft on the inside.

The resulting sauce was thick and sugary. As such, I enjoyed eating the asparagus. I only ate a couple of spears for dinner, but before going to sleep, I made sure to eat what remained of the asparagus. After I finished the last of the asparagus, I poured the remaining sauce into the sausage dish.

[20121202][20161114 Edit]

---

Relevant Links:
Asparagus Tips (About.com)
: Page 1 gives an introduction on asparagus: why eat them, how to choose and store them, and what to do with them.
: Page 2 gives several options on how to cook asparagus. The page describes how to steam, boil, blanch, microwave, stir-fry, roast, and grill asparagus.
Stir frying (Wikipedia.org)
Sauteing (Wikipedia.org)
Pan frying (Wikipedia.org)
My Sausage, Asparagus, and Mashed Potatoes post