Pan Roasted Asparagus with Miso Butter and Poached Egg (from the Momofuku cookbook)

By SMSchreiber

Oh. My. Heavens. MISO BUTTER!! Have you ever heard of such a thing? Have you ever dreamt about such a thing? David Chang – you are a genius! David Chang is the guy behind Momofuku, which is apparently a “restaurant group” in NYC, I’ve never been there but I did get his cookbook out of the library. And this is what I did with it.

This recipe was so delicious, I am tempted to end every single sentence of this post with an exclamation mark!

Pan roasted asparagus (roasted in butter I might add). Poached egg (only I was lazy and fried ours), runny yolk, and the amazingly delicious miso butter. AAAAhhh, it’s all just too much. You’re going to have to make it yourself, it’s not at all hard or time consuming, to find out just how wonderful this is. Asparagus season has just begun, so there’s no excuse not to. Even my husband, who was less than thrilled that we were having asparagus as the main course for dinner, had seconds. This recipe has so much umami it’s so utterly satisfying.

Everyone’s talking about Momofuku – and I see why. Next stop: Momofuku Milk Bar Compost Cookies – these have totally gone viral, every food blogger everywhere is making them – so there must be a reason.

Ingredients

• 1 bunch asparagus
• 1/2 cup white (shiro) miso
• 1 stick butter, softened (divided)
• 4 eggs
• 2 teaspoons sherry vinegar

Preparation

Step 1

Snap the asparagus stems to remove the woody bottoms. Rinse them off.

Mix together the miso and 5 tablespoons of the butter in a bowl.

Put the rest of the butter in a skillet over medium high heat and throw in the asparagus. Give it 2 or 3 minutes and then stir it up, it will get some color on it but remain snappy, that’s what you want. In the cookbook they tell you to do it in batches and not to crowd it, I missed that completely and threw it all in the pan. Guess what, it was totally fine. Do what you need to do.

Take out the asparagus and drain it on some paper towels.

In the meantime: poach or fry the egg. In the Momofuku cookbook there is an (I’m sure revolutionary) recipe for slow poached eggs in their shells. I didn’t get around to that.

In a small pan heat the vinegar. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the butter. It will loosen up a little, but remain thick (see the finished plate, it’s under the asparagus.

To serve: Put a generous amount of miso butter on the plate, top with asparagus, and an egg.