My wife and I recently ate at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Las Vegas. Long before David Chang’s Momofuku Ko in New York City, L’Atelier combined counter dining and haute cuisine.
At L’Atelier, most of the seats are comfortable high stools at the counter, overlooking the immaculate open kitchen, where Robuchon’s young crew of cooks produces the food with induction burners, Rationale ovens and surgical tweezers.
The menu, as is to be expected from a globe-trotting chef, ranged widely from Spain (pan con tomate, served with a lavish platter of Iberico ham) to Japan (Dover sole with soy and ginger) to Thailand (pineapple with lemongrass).
But as well executed as these dishes were, none of them had the gastro-emotional impact on me as this dish of jumbo asparagus stuffed into macaroni tubes and garnished with Comte (a kind of Gruyere), lots of cream, veal stock and bacon. I felt the way the jaded critic Anton Ego feels at the end of “Ratatouille” when he tastes the eponymous dish: Immediately, through a tunnel of memory, he is transported to his boyhood, where he sits at a kitchen table in short pants, eating his loving mother’s ratatouille.
The asparagus dish I tasted had the flavor combinations I grew up eating in France — asparagus and cream and pasta and onions and bacon and sharp Gruyere cheese, refined and elevated. This is the kind of food French chefs do better than any other.
The Chef de Cuisine at L’Atelier, Steve Benjamin (actually a Frenchman, the son of a Steve McQueen admirer) kindly shared this recipe with me. I have made a few substitutions and alterations: The dish was originally made with veal bacon, which is hard to find in this country.
Also, for this dish to work, the asparagus must fit snuggly inside the pasta tubes — find a large macaroni or cannelloni with a about 1 inch diameter, which should comfortably hold a piece of jumbo asparagus. If you can’t find asparagus and pasta that will fit, serve them tossed together in the sauce.
John Broening cooks at Duo and Olivea restaurants in Denver.
Jumbo Asparagus With Macaroni, Comte Cheese and Bacon
Serves 4 as an appetizer.
Ingredients
8 jumbo asparagus
8 dried cannelloni or large macaroni
2 cups milk
2 cups heavy cream
3 whole cloves garlic
Salt and pepper
Pinch paprika
1/2 cup sliced shallots
1 tablespoon butter
1/4 cup smoked bacon, diced
1/2 cup veal demi glace
8 parsley leaves
5 ounces Comte cheese, grated
Directions
Blanch the asparagus in boiling water for 3 to 4 minutes, depending on the size of the asparagus. When done, drop asparagus in ice water until cool. Drain
Cook the pasta in 2 cups milk and 1 quart salted water for 8 minutes. When done, drop macaroni in the ice water until cool.
In a small saucepan, cook the cream with the whole garlic cloves over medium-high heat until reduced by half. Cool. Season with salt and paprika. Set aside.
In small saute pan, slowly cook the shallots in the butter with a pinch of salt. Add the bacon, and cook until softed and rendered but not colored. Add the veal demi glace, and simmer until slightly thickened. Set aside.
Stick the asparagus inside the cooked pasta tubes. Preheat broiler. Place the asparagus in a buttered baking dish. Cover with the reduced cream, then sprinkle with the cheese.
Broil the asparagus until golden brown. Serve hot, garnished with the bacon shallot jus and the parsley leaves.
