Getting creative with asparagus

Asparagus time again. It's great to have a treat that's also got to be good for you!
         I got creative with it in the weekend. I had some blue cheese left over from Harvey's launch. (Yes, I know that was a while ago, but it was very good Kapiti blue cheese and it was perfectly fine.) And friends had brought us some walnuts from their tree.

         Harvey was pefectly happy with leftover mince on toast, but I felt like pasta (which he really isn't madly keen on). In my favourite Italian book, Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy, I found a recipe for gorgonzola sauce for spaghetti.

It's extremely simple: melt a little butter, stir in the crumbled cheese, mix well, add a little milk (I put a teaspoon of flour in the milk before adding it), stir well and pour over cooked spaghetti.

Before that, though, I snapped the woody ends of a bunch of skinny asparagus - we like the skinny ones best - and cooked the stalks until they were easy to bite but still crunchy.

While they were cooking, I fished out my ancient nutcracker and got to work on a little pile of walnuts, then finely chopped up the shelled nuts.

Once the spaghetti was cooked, I poured the sauce over it, scattered pieces of asparagus over the top, sprinkled over the chopped walnuts and added a good grinding of black pepper. Magnifico.