An asparagus recipe for gourmets:
Green asparagus spears with Parma ham, fonduta ( Piedmont cheese sauce ) and lettuce.
Remove woody ends from asparagus spears and perhaps remove peel. Wrap the raw asparagus spears with the Parma ham. Coat this asparagus in egg, breadcrumbs, flour. Just before serving, fry in the clarified butter until crispy.
Finely dice the fontina cheese and let it swell in the milk for at least 6 hours. Add the butter to the soaked cheese and let it melt over a water bath, stirring continuously. When it is smooth and no longer stringy, add the egg yolks one by one, stirring continuously. The quantity must have accepted each egg yolk at the beginning, then add the next.
If the fonduta fails, you can save it with a little flour butter.
Just before serving, season with truffle oil (or fresh truffle, according to the original Piedmontese recipe) and a little pepper.
For the leaf salad, cut the asparagus spears diagonally into very thin slices. Divide the washed and cleaned leaf lettuce evenly as a bed on the plates. Blanch the tomatoes, peel, core, cut into eighths and add to the lettuce. Mix salt and pepper with oil and vinegar. Dip asparagus slices into the salad dressing. Pour everything over the leaf salad.
Present the baked asparagus spears like mikado sticks.