On Saturday night, we made Mario Batali’s Chicken Saltimbocca with Asparagus, which turned out to be a huge success. I honestly don’t think we’ve made anything else in our six years of cooking together that looked so pretty on the plate and (despite having more than a few steps) was so easy to make.

What makes this dish special in that it uses a sweet, Italian dessert wine called vin santo (literally, “holy wine”) in the sauce. We had this wine during our recent trip to Tuscany and were excited to try cooking with it. One thing to note, however, is that vin santo can be a little on the expensive side, at least based on our experience. We think this recipe would probably work just as well with Marsala or Madeira, which should be much less expensive, or even with a white wine.

To make this dish, I first cooked the asparagus in boiling water…