White asparagus, photo by justbecause, flickr
Think of a vegetable, an expensive vegetable. Think of asparagus. What colour is it? What, to you, does a real stalk of asparagus look like? Do an experiment. Google "asparagus" images and the page is green.
I have always been puzzled by green asparagus. It's wrong. It doesn't fit. It's too small. One end of the asparagus can be hard and chewy and the other mush. This is not what I remember. This is not asparagus. Asparagus is white and phallic, not weedy. And yet all we see in the shops is green asparagus. Very odd.
Asparagus has always been a great delicacy, but these green stalks are small and underwhelming and they taste... well they taste too green - indelicate.
Real asparagus is a thick white stalk about nine inches long and - if it's peeled carefully - 1 to 2 centimetres in diameter. The asparagus is boiled, it should be very soft and not crunchy at all. The tip retains its shape. You can buy them everywhere in northern Europe in spring for about 11 Euros a kilo, but not in the UK. In the UK the wool is pulled over our eyes and we are duped by the green asparagus they grow and sell everywhere and it's nothing to do with taste.
A traditional way of eating asparagus is with sweet, boiled new potatoes and lightly flavoured ham. The asparagus is served in a dish in some of its water. The asparagus stalks are put onto plates with tongs and then melted butter is poured over them.
That is how I remember asparagus when I was younger. That's how my grandmother and mother served it.
As far as I'm concerned white asparagus is the benchmark and not green. Green asparagus is a testimony the the power of marketing, white asparagus is a testimony to taste and to the platonic essence of asparagus.
From Evelien
ReplyDeleteI fully agree, white aspergus served as you say and possibly with an additional hard boiled egg that is lightly mashed with a fork and always with a dash of freshly grated nutmeg over the aspergus. Still eating it like that in my Dutch family.