Asparagus 'bolognaise'

Technically, it's not a bolognaise, but I can't very well call it a pasta now can I? What I am talking about is the 'side dish'. The meat in this is marinaded chicken steak, available from the butcher. If I marinaded it myself I would add that into this, but I didn't, so I wont. Simple enough? What you'll need to make a rather nice dish is:

A handful of narrow, raw asparagus, cut in half (about 2 cups)
3 whole tomatoes
1 brown onion
Butter
parmesan cheese

First of all, you're going to want to put your meat (if you eat it) on first, this really does not take all that long to cook. While that's happening, get a butter knife, and peel off a scrape of the butter -- about what you'd put on a piece of bread -- and toss that into a separate frying pan from your meat. Let it melt, peel and slice your onion into half moon slices, the basic slice if you're going to fry it, or whatever, so you can pick it up with a pair of tongs rather than needing a spoon or somesuch.

The onion is the first to go into the butter. Let it simmer away and soften, until the individual layers in each slice separate, and you have a tangled mess of semi-transparant onion in your pan. The handful of -thin- asparagus cut in half goes in next, with another scrape of butter on top. Toss it around to get the butter coating everything, and let it simmer on low heat.

This both fries, and steams the asparagus, letting it absorb the deliciousness of the onion and butter, while still retaining some crunch. Not much, but a little. Cut off the top of the tomato, slice and dice it and put it in the pan once the asparagus is half-cooked. Basically, if you filch a piece from the pan and bite into it, it tastes not -purely- asparagus, it's soft on the outside but still crisp in the middle and warm the whole way through, that's when you toss the tomato in.

(don't forget your meat, you should have turned it over by now)

Put the lid on and let the tomato steam and simmer until there is a fine layer of sauce on the bottom of the pan. Toss the asparagus and onion repeatedly through it to get a lovely layer, shake a -little- salt over it if desired, but there should not be much at all. You now have soft, soupy like tomato, crisper asparagus and strips of onion to compliment. It is ready!

Serve onto a plate, add your meat and grate a little bit of parmesan cheese on top to melt into the dish. Normal cheddar or a small dollop of sour cream would work just as well, but parmesan is slightly better for you and be honest, there's enough fat in there as it is with the butter!

And voila, you have a delicious way to eat raw asparagus that is very narrow and fiddly if you're not sure what to do with the stuff.

Protip: If you are cooking marinaded anything, like I did, fry it with the lid -on- the pan, to keep all the moisture inside the meat, makes it taste much more delicious.