The Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale

I was recently watching How I Met Your Mother (great show, but not as much the past two seasons, sigh) and in one episode, Barney makes up the Hot/Crazy Scale.  He says that a woman's hotness needs to outweigh her craziness to be worth dating (or just sleeping with, in his case).  I think a similar scale should be created for cooking, so I am hereby announcing the invention of the Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale.  (It's going to be a thing.)

Some foods, let's face it, are a real pain to make.  Some are time-consuming, others have difficult techniques involved.  Yet other dishes are just really tough to get to stay in their shape or form, while there is the group that make severe injury a likely occurrence.  To counter this pain-in-the-ass-ness, food needs to be yummy.  The Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale states that a food has to be yummier than it is a pain to cook.  Back to this in a moment.

Tonight, one of the students I used to advise when he was in high school came over for dinner; he is currently on winter break from college.  I made spaghetti with a white wine tomato-garlic sauce and, to go with it, my first ever shaved asparagus salad.

This dish walked the Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass line very closely.  Shaving asparagus was very time consuming, as the mandolin we have is only really good for going a single stalk at a time, and each stalk was only good for four or five shavings, unless I wanted to discard the hand guard, making injury not so much likely as guaranteed.  (And as someone who has in the past run a finger through a mandolin, it is not something I care to repeat.)  Combined with making the dressing, brunoising the shallot and shaving the parmesan, this was a pretty lengthy process. 

But it was yummy, and the two dinner participants who did not have to prepare it said it was well worth MY efforts.  I will leave it to you to judge, but I would not recommend making it for more than a few people, as it would then fall well under the line.

Shaved Asparagus Salad
1 bunch of fresh asparagus, tips removed (but saved) and stalks trimmed to be of manageable length and fibrousness
1 shallot, brunoised (finely diced)
1 tbsp white wine vinegar
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp white truffle oil
Olive oil until it comes together
Salt, pepper to taste
Shaved fresh parmesan cheese, as much as you like
Shave the asparagus using a mandolin, being careful to use the hand guard so as not to shave the hand.  put shavings (and asparagus tips) into ice water until you are done.  Make your dressing, adding shallot, vinegar, lemon juice and truffle oil to a bowl, and whisk in just enough olive oil to make it come together (should not be more than a couple tablespoons).  Toss in asparagus and add salt, pepper and cheese.  Toss once more to coat.

This makes it sound pretty easy, but the shaving of the asparagus will take you a while, and possibly a few tries with different settings on your mandolin to get right, as it should be thin enough to be flexible, but not so thin that it will break when being tossed.

But asparagus salad or not, please make sure to tell your friends about the Yummy/Pain-in-the-Ass Scale.  It really is going to be a thing.