Griddled Asparagus with Truffled Balsamic and Old Winchester Cheese

Griddle me this, griddle me that

But the flesh needs colour

The chars bring black

- The Griddler

Do not attempt this recipe without the thickest, stickiest balsamic imaginable.

That shit's gotta be older than Sophia Loren. It just so happens that mine is also infused with white truffles – a lovely bequest from my landlady. Lucky old Cereal Killah, eh? If you don't have this to hand, just reduce some normal balsamic in a pan until it has the consistency of syrup.

Now when I plan to serve a dish with truffles, my thoughts turn immediately to something dirty and farmyardy. That means egg or cheese. Or forcing yourself upon a chicken.

Well after a week of slurping miserably through a grotesque alioli surplus, I had ordered an egg embargo. What I wanted now was a hard cheese to grate over my griddled spears and caramelise onto their charred skin.

Pecorino? Parmesan? No. There was, as so often, an under-appreciated English alternative. One of the many undervalued cheeses in our dairy canon is Old Winchester. It's halfway between the Italian showponies cited above. And it just feels better when serving something as English as asparagus. Waitrose have stocked it in the past, but you can also get it online from Lyburn Farm.

Ingredients:

Two bunches of English asparagus

Really old, thick balsamic vinegar

Old Winchester cheese (or Parmesan or Pecorino if you want to be an unpatriotic dog)

Pretty simple stuff really:

1. Prep the asparagus spears. You know the routine – bend them till they snap. This technique magically finds the natural cut-off between succulent flesh and chewy wood. Apparently. It's a bit like a ouija board though – your instinct manually guides the final result.

2. Parboil those boys. This means two or three minutes in a really big pan of water. The more water is boiling, the less impact a fistful of asparagus is going to have on its temperature; the less impact on temperature, the quicker the boil; and the quicker your greens boil, the more vivid their final emerald robes. Finally, freeze that colour in by water-boarding the asparagus in ice-cold H2O.

3. Get your plates ready. This means drizzling some kind of centrifugal pattern on the plate wit your balsamic (pre-prepped if it's a reduction.) It shouldn't be too perfect – this is not a restaurant and it shouldn't try to be. Clearly, the vinegar shouldn't run. It should hit the plate and stick.

4. Take the asparagus spears out of their cold bath. Dry 'em off, real nice and tender like. What these guys don't know is that you've got a griddle pan smoking hot and you're gonna toss them across its scorching bars - ha! There will be screams of protest, but that's what we're after here.

Two things on griddling:

The asparagus should criss-cross the contours of the griddle pan. In the words of Monica Geller, if they're not at a right angle, they're at a wrong angle.

You must leave them on the pan for a good few minutes without moving them. We want one or two black chars on the asparagus, not a series of dark green smudges. If need be, focus on one spear and see how he's getting on. Don't move the whole lot around until you know that fella's ready to roll. You're a stage performer focusing on one member of the audience.

Ok, shake the spears about till you see a lot of charred sides up, then let them cook for another two minutes or so. Heat off - the asparagus is done.

5. Visually enumerate the asparagus spears and divide this total by the number of diners, rounding down to the nearest unit. Use tongs to grab this number of spears, and lay them across the balsamic swirls on each plate in a London Underground formation.

Finish by grating a fine shower of Old Winchester onto the spears, quick while they're still hot. Wait a moment, then a little drizzle of olive oil. And crumble some Maldon seat salt on, naturally.

Serve.

This made a decent starter to my dinner party with the lovely Carolin and Anna.