I love this recipe; I bought some lamb neck fillet yesterday as well as asparagus, so will be making this. Where we lived in France they grew lots of white asparagus, but I prefer our British green spears. I know that white asparagus is said to be sweeter and more subtle than green but I definitely prefer the green for both flavour and texture. There are a number of British farmers producing white asparagus these days and I reckon there's been an increase in the number of French recipes I've seen lately using green asparagus so perhaps there's starting to be less of a difference between here and France than there used to be.
Well, you could make this with white asparagus and lose the colour but I think it would also lose some of the flavour. Still, at least it's not a blue sauce - that would be really difficult to cope with. Lamb is my favourite meat, and I love asparagus too.
Sounds delicious Phil! Despite a few trips across the channel, I was not familiar with the word Argenteuil but I do remember discovering lots of white asparagus! I do love slow cooked lamb and nearly don't make it often enough.
I'm not surprised that you haven't heard Argenteuil used in the names of dishes. I think the last commercial spear of asparagus was cut there at least 25 years ago and in France you're more likely to find asparagus from somewhere like the Landes region these days. But I'm very old and this recipe in some form or other is probably a fair bit older than me if you can believe that. Just wanted to tell you that I made this, Phil, and it was really delicious.
Thank you for the recipe. You're most welcome. In my mind it's definitely one of those classic recipes that doesn't deserve to be forgotten.
