Ad Hoc: Asparagus with Poached Egs, Prosciutto, and Croutons

This recipe, more than any other, fascinated me every time I thumbed by its picture.  As i've discussed before, i'm scared of poached eggs.  I had never eaten a poached egg before I embarked on this project.  Technically, I still hadn't eaten a poached chicken egg until I made this.  I've always been grossed out by runny yolks and salmonella and overly bright colors.  Poached eggs were the biggest offenders.  The SMELL of them made me gag.  I even used to make my dad make me scrambled eggs for our christmas/mother's day eggs benedict.  (sometimes I wonder how my parents tolerated feeding me as a kid)

Until.  Until this.  The picture that I kept coming back to.  I decided it was time to try a poached egg.

And you know what?  I DO like green eggs and ham... oh, wait.. poached eggs.  I couldn't eat a lot, they are too rich for me to even try, but I just LOVED this.  To bits.  So much that I even want to try real eggs benedict now (I still haven't figured out how i'm going to break this to my dad).

Not only was it delicious, it was easy.  Like 30 minutes to table easy.  At least as long as asparagus is in season, this may be a go-to for quick dinners.

Now... enough talk, lets see some pictures!  (even though I say this sequentially, I was really pretty much doing this all at once)

First, I ripped up some bread, heated up garlic oil (that I luckily still had on hand from the lamb), and made croutons.  I overcooked them a teensy bit - they cooked quick! - but they were still buttery-garlicky deliciousness.

Next, I poached the eggs.  And did a remarkably good job for such a newbie - no broken eggs!  My only issue was that Brandon bought extra large eggs instead of large, so I had to poke them around a bit to get the eggs around the yolk to cook through.

Finally, I threw some olive oil, salt, and pepper on the asparagus and grilled them in my grill pan.

Because I was in a hurry, I didn't put the eggs in an ice-bath, cut the white "tails" off, or reheat the eggs.  But they were fine anyways.

"Artfully" arranged on each of our plates after all of the elements were done, along with a little torn up prosciutto, a drizzle of balsamic, and a sprinkle of fleur de sel.

The verdict:  Brandon cleaned his plate.  I savored half, then said if I ate anymore I would be sick... so Brandon polished off my other half.  Like i've said before: human garbage disposal makes me feel better about food waste!