Gratin d'asperges au jambon et au fromage de chèvre...

...and a video, below. Yesterday I called this a cooking experiment, mainly because I wasn't sure that fresh goat cheese would have enough flavor to complement white asparagus spears and ham. I needn't have worried; it was good. Here's what the fresh goat cheese looks like. It a little bit like Italian ricotta or, maybe, American cottage cheese that has been blended to a smooth but slightly grainy texture. It's spreadable.

Put 120 grams (4 oz.) of cheese into 120 grams (4 fl. oz) of heavy cream or whipping cream (crème fleurette in France) along with two whole eggs. Use a blender to turn the mixture into a smooth liquid. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour the liquid into the bottom of a baking dish that is big enough to hold the asparagus spears. Then wrap four bundles of pre-cooked, fairly "fat" asparagus spears (2 or 3 per bundle depending on how fat they are) in slices of ham. You can use proscuitto-style ham (cured jambon cru) or U.S. "sandwich ham" (jambon de Paris). Lay the bundles in the baking dish on top of the cream sauce.

Crumble some more fresh goat cheese and sprinkle it over the asparagus-ham bundles. I used the same cheese that went into the creamy sauce, but you could use grated semi-hard (demi-sec) or fully hard (sec) goat cheese — or even grated Italian Romano or Parmesan cheese, which will give a different but good flavor. Sprinkle on some more black pepper and some paprika (a mixture of hot, smoked, and sweet paprikas, for example). Brown the gratin in the oven for about 30 minutes at 350ºC (180ºF) to cook the creamy custard and melt the cheese.

I'm sorry I didn't take more pictures. Below is one of the bundles of ham-wrapped asparagus spears as it came out of the pan after baking in the oven. It's not as photogenic as the photos on Walt's recent asparagus tart post or ones I found on a blog that presents a similar recipe made with green asparagus and using both goat cheese and Italian mozarella.

Finally, I wanted to post this YouTube video about the goat cheeses made in and around Selles-sur-Cher. The cheese I used for the gratin does not actually qualify for the Selles-sur-Cher appellation because it's made with pasteurized, not raw goat's milk and it's not aged but fresh. It's made by a dairy just outside the little town of Selles-sur-Cher, however.

Here are two other web sites (link one and link two) with a lot of information about Selles-sur-Cher cheese, including videos, recipes, and maps. They're all in French of course.