Asparagus

LOCALLY GROWN ASPARAGUS is one of the early harbingers of spring. The spears are sweet, often arriving at markets just days after harvesting when the sugar content is high, making them quite different in flavor from the summer and winter asparagus that can come from as far away as Peru.

I have an asparagus patch in my garden that we planted 20 years ago. We still get armloads of the bright green spears, starting in late February and continuing through April. Some are plump, some thin, all delicious. At first, we eat them raw, shaving them to make a salad dressed only with salt and pepper and extra-virgin olive oil. We also steam, grill and roast them to serve with just about anything from salmon to steak. A favorite salad is steamed asparagus, lightly dressed with a vinaigrette and topped with finely chopped egg whites and egg yolks that have been pushed through a sieve directly onto the ready-to-serve asparagus, next to the chopped egg whites.

At markets in the United States, we most commonly find asparagus varieties whose spears are meant to come up through the soil, to photosynthesize and turn green. Purple asparagus is treated the same way, though when cooked it becomes green. More popular in Europe are the varieties bred to be kept underground, their spears never exposed to the sun. These white asparagus are harvested while still buried beneath the earth. In Germany, once white asparagus arrives at the market, “spargle” signs are everywhere and they are featured on every menu from beer halls to fine-dining restaurants. The same is true in France, where white asparagus is a seasonal specialty, though the green asparagus is becoming better known there.

A plate of five plump white asparagus spears bathed in a sabayon sauce, enjoyed in a café in Paris, still stands out in my memory, as does another meal where the white asparagus were lightly chilled and accompanied by slices of several different hams in a village in Germany. I confess, however, that the few times I’ve tried to cook the white varieties myself, I’ve been disappointed. I’ll stick to cooking green asparagus at home, and enjoy the white variety cooked by someone else.