Asparagus Mania

The quiet intensity of a country waiting for one harvest

To eat in someone else’s garden is a luxury beyond measure. It’s an opportunity to admire another artist’s work intimately. Especially when you get the invitation to celebrate asparagus Spargel season in a German family’s home. When my housemate Josi told me that her parents had invited us over for lunch in the garden, I knew I couldn’t give up the opportunity to savor the delights of another gardener’s work. I brought some grilled broccolini with garlic and lemon butter to add to the table, not only because it celebrated the tender sweetness of spring vegetables, but also because I can’t show up to anyone’s home empty handed. I roamed the garden as her parents prepared the grilled vegetables and the paprika laced chicken thighs on the grill. I roamed the garden soaking in the fragrance of the flora and fauna, being lured to the aroma of the ripe, bright strawberries. “Just taste one”, the permission I needed to pop a small sweet strawberry in my mouth, taking in the burst of intense tartness followed by a lingering sweetness. No jolly rancher could ever compete with the intensity of flavor coating my tongue. In the back of the garden, I sat on a tree stub, taking in the shade of the delicate and fragrant elderflower tree, its fluffy exterior raining like glitter against the light of the sun. I paused for peace, time seemed to slow down in the shower of flowers as they trickled down to the ground. It felt as if someone was delicately placing each petal to the ground.

“Mochtest du Holunderblütenlimonade?”

I went into the kitchen to help with the preparation and found Josi’s mom slowly peeling the white asparagus and trimming the woody ends with a paring knife and setting them aside on her cutting board, the peelings curling like ribbons against the board. She then gently arranged them in a stainless steel pot half filled with water, to which she added some salt, sugar, and a knob of butter and swirled it around. While the pot was simmering away, she blended some egg yolks, cayenne, lemon juice and water on the side and s-l-o-w-l-y added some hot butter to thicken the sauce. Then she leaned over and pierced the asparagus with a knife to check on its readiness.

“Kommst du zum Mittagessen, nuh?”

In a world where we are rushing to scarf down our lunch only to rush into the next meeting, I remember this stillness fondly. With no phones, no texts to distract me, it became an intimate get to know you using the language of food to understand the other. The gingham table cloth was fluttering in the breeze while her mom placed heavy ironstone dishes with paprika chicken, grilled white asparagus with hollandaise and little cups of creamy chestnut soup to start the meal. “The chestnut trees are blooming again and you said you wanted to try them for our tree right?” I felt seen. Food has always been the language of love in my home, and suddenly, with this nod, the tension in my body released and I felt welcomed into their home.

To an untrained eye, the white asparagus is no different than the green. The white asparagus is more fibrous than the green, hence my first few attempts at cooking it resulted in a limp, larvae like thing that was way too chewy to enjoy. Josi’s mom added a golden treacle of the hollandaise sauce, gleaming from the hot butter peppered with speckles of poppy red. Having them side by side on the table, and upon tasting my first bite, it was easy to see why many Germans refer to the white asparagus as “white gold”. When tended to in the right manner, I felt as if I had unlocked an entirely new flavor with subtle sweetness. The thicker and more fibrous stem left me with a few extra moments of lingering honeyed sweetness. With German winters being so shockingly dark, we all look forward to longer days and the lightness of spring. When days finally get longer and you bike past the many plastic domes with the little white pearl like nibs peaking through the earth. This white asparagus feels like a gentle reminder that the spring is in full gear.

I spent half my life in America, where asparagus was available year round because it was shipped from Spain or Chile or South Africa. We were too busy to ever notice the changes in flavor, only the price tag. Germany, in contrast, was a welcomed homecoming to the hyperseasonal joys of eating: summers full of plump strawberries and cherries, fall teeming with seasonal mushrooms, winters full of sweeter roots like salsify and carrots, and the spring frenzy of Spargel. In Germany, this white asparagus is only available for a limited time between April and June so people have engineered all their meals to savour this prized ingredient in large quantities, paying more for it than meat per kilo.

Spargelzeit, or Spargel season, especially for the highly prized white asparagus is a movement and an obsession. White asparagus is similar to its green cousin, but turns bitter when exposed to sunlight, so the farmers must grow underground to prevent the chlorophyll from developing and hand pick them to prevent damage to the stalks. This labor intensive process is precisely why this spargel is so expensive and so ephemeral. Many farms are now trying to extend that time period for greater profitability, to exactly the kind of passion I like to see about food, but that obsessive passion is rare for Germans. For the two sweet months between spring and summer, every menu at every restaurant stars this ingredient, there are Spargel festivals, and tiny wooden stands dotted all across town selling the latest. It’s a lesson in the temporal nature of joy, the quiet understanding that some things are meant to be savored while they last.