ASPARAGUS

For about eight weeks from April to June, England -- and especially the Fens -- produces what is arguably the finest asparagus in the world.

It is impossible to talk about asparagus without sounding like a winning entry in Private Eye's 'Pseuds Corner' feature. "This is the queen of vegetables, valued above all for its delicate mellow taste, earthy, verdant, seductive, luxuriant, full of hope for the days of brightness and sunshine ahead." So says the BBC's website.

This is a member of the lily family; the name is a corruption of its earlier name of 'sparrowgrass'. It originates from the eastern Mediterranean, where it has been popular since the beginning of the last millennium, but its cultivation in England dates only from the 16th century. Our appetite for these shoots is such that the supermarkets import from southern Spain in an attempt to prolong the season, but the all-too-brief appearance of the home grown vegetable is well worth waiting for. One excellent reason among many is that as soon as it is cut, the sugars in the stalks convert quickly into starch, diminishing both flavour and nutritional worth (see below). Buy fresh for the best taste -- and buy local: our pictured specimens came no further than from Emneth, and were eaten the same day!

Its position as a 'luxury' item is in part due to the sheer impossibility of growing it as an industrial process. The crowns can be grown at home, but it will take you four years before you see the crop. And on the way to your harvest, all the planting, cutting and weeding will need to be done by hand.

Like the majority of fresh vegetables, asparagus is good for you -- it's a marvellous source of folic acid and vitamins, and is low in fat and carbohydrates. There's also a wider than imagined variety, not least of colours. In England, we tend to think of asparagus as being green, but in France the plant is grown away from the light, to produce a popular white variety, generally shunned by the British as being too bland and tasteless.

The traditional way of cooking is to steam a bundle for up to 5 minutes (the smaller and tighter the stalks, the better the flavour). But it's excellent for soups, which is one way of prolonging the season beyond the pitiful si xweeks, and elsewhere on the web site we have our long-standing recipe for pot roast asparagus. The adventurous might also like to adapt the simple sprouting broccoli starter recipe to use with three or four asparagus stalks.

 

 

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