Preparation

In a saucepan, place 50 ml of vinegar, 50 ml of wine and 50 ml of water together with chopped shallots,

1tsp of peppercorns and 1tsp of salt. Reduce to 1/3 of original volume. Put aside.

Peel your white asparagus carefully but you can use your green ones unpeeled. Cut hard end off all asparagus and keep under a damp dishtowel until ready to cook.

Melt the butter in a small pan over a very low heat, then skim off the froth with a perforated spoon. Poor the rest through a sieve lined with a fine muslim, to strain out solids. Set aside until needed. Hard boil 2 eggs and when cold, remove yolks and chop finely.

Thirty minutes before serving, start to cook your asparagus. In a suitable pan, boil some water with a bit of salt. Put your white asparagus in that water for about 12 minutes. Cook your green asparagus for about 6 minutes. Drain and keep on a hot plate.

Sauce for 'a la flamanda'

In a sauce pan, put 1/3 of the total of clarified butter, lemon juice (2 tsp),chopped chives, some ground pepper and salt and heat very gently.

Hollandaise

Prepare a bain-marie (boil water in a sauce pan big enough to enable you to put your bowl on top) and put a bowl on top with 2 tbsp of reduction. Let the reduction warm up and then whisk in two raw eggs yolk and start adding slowly the remaining clarified butter to it it. Add as much butter as you need to make your sauce at your taste. Some like it quite sour others not. Reserve on the side.

Roll 1 slice of Parma ham around 5 white asparagus and repeat with the green. On the white asparagus, put a bit of the cooked egg yolk and spoon out the clarified butter with lemon juice. Spoon some of the hollandaise sauce on the green asparagus.