pasta with asparagus, pesto and poached egg

Can this be summer finally arriving? This week has been spent variously hungover, drinking in the streets and sipping pink champagne on the balcony of the Wellington Arch on Hyde Park Corner:

Today I spend it mainly sweltering in the kitchen whilst working from home. As ever with working-from-home Thursdays, after dropping Milo off at nursery I come home via my new-found (well, Ana found it) favourite coffee shop, Pickle & Rye on Sheen Lane, to pick up a flat white and a sandwich for lunch. The day then quite literally drains away in a torrent of rosé being shipped out to Putney for the weekend. By the time Ana and Milo get home, I'm starving and ready to get stuck into the 2-for-1 bunches of asparagus we got in Waitrose.

I have to say I'm a relatively new convert to the charms of angiosperms (snigger), partly because I'm one of that 22% who smell asparagus-y effluvia - you all make it mind - but this old recipe really kick-started our intake. 'Tis also in season, why not get stuck in eh?

Wine Time
Now this maybe purely because of the smell, but I'm going to go with a really grassy - rather than full-blown tropical fruit - New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. If that doesn't take your fancy, you couldn't go far wrong sticking with culture and trying it with a fruity Pinot Grigio, or a herbaceous Soave.

sources
pasta with asparagus, pesto and poached egg - Delicious, May 2005, p110