Girl in the Kitchen: Asparagus Linguine with Almond Butter Crisp

This would be a fairly straightforward pasta dish — asparagus, baby arugula and olive oil — before you add the almond butter crisp.  And please, take a moment to fully absorb that that concept: Almond.  Butter.  Crisp.  It’s nuts and butter and bread crumbs and parmesan.  As Stephanie says, it’s a savory version of a crunchy topping you might typically find on a fruit dessert and bless her heart for re-imagining it so we can eat it more often.  And make no mistake: it is the Crisp that makes this dish extraordinary.  After you make it you may want to store it in your neighbor’s fridge until the pasta is ready lest you nibble away at all of it before dinner.

This would be a good option for a week night meal but for the roasted garlic, which will set you back 30-40 minutes.  If you can manage to remember to do that ahead of time this becomes more realistic for a Tuesday night.

And here’s some wisdom about about breadcrumbs.  Please don’t tell me you’re buying cans of these things at the store.  That would make me cry.  What I do is collect all of the heels of loaves of bread, the extra hot dog and hamburger buns, etc., process them into crumbs in the food processor, and keep them in a ziploc bag in the freezer.  It makes me feel frugal and virtuous and I need all of that I can get.

The recipe is right here, thanks to HuffPo.