At this time of year, you may find me doing one of two things. Either I will be standing in the garden, straining to see the first swifts wheeling in the sky above our house, or I’ll be swinging by the greengrocer yet again, in the hope of English asparagus. Officially, the asparagus season begins on St George’s Day, which falls on 23 April. But recent winters have been so warm, it has sometimes arrived as early as February. As I write, though, I’m still waiting: yesterday, the bunch I picked up and promptly put back down again came with a label that read “Peru”.
I don’t know if English asparagus is the best, but it is very, very delicious, and it has a long and delightful history. As Catherine Brown tells us in The Taste of Britain, until the early 17th century, in England the vegetable was an “unimproved oddity”, somewhat neglected even as it was regularly eaten. “When I see the weedy specimens of this noble plant for sale in London I never cease to wonder why no one has yet taken the trouble to improve its cultivation,” wrote Giacomo Castelveltro, the humanist and traveller, in 1614. In his native Italy, asparagus was taken a lot more seriously, by gardeners and gourmands alike. But things were about to change. Soon, London was ringed by growers, especially in Mortlake and Deptford; it was from one such garden, in Fenchurch Street, that Samuel Pepys bought “a hundred of sparrow grass” in 1667.
And where London went, the rest of the country followed. In particular, the Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire became associated with asparagus, as it still is today, though I gather that Lincolnshire now exceeds it in terms of production, if not flavour. It was often grown on the land between trees in orchards. I have never been to the asparagus festival that is held at the Fleece Inn at Bretforten every May; I am afraid of horse brasses, a strange and rare condition that has its roots in childhood. But I gather it’s now just about the only place you’ll still find bundles of asparagus bound with osier twigs tied in traditional patterns (osier is a kind of willow, used for basket-weaving).
Good early asparagus is so subtle and so scrumptious; I could honestly eat it every night, and never tire of it. In those first weeks, I don’t think anything much should be done to it, though I always insist on lightly peeling the stalks. Seasoning and melted butter – at a push, some hollandaise – is all it really needs. But then it begins to grow a little woodier, at which point you might want to experiment. The thick ends can be used for soup, and the tips used in an omelette or scrambled eggs. In Colin Spencer’s (still brilliant) Vegetable Pleasures, there’s a recipe for asparagus soufflé that helpfully deploys both fibrous stems (pureed, and passed through a sieve) and tips (added just before you put the soufflé in the oven). Asparagus risotto is good, and it goes well with crab, too: eke it out as a side dish here by combining it with some broad beans, whether fresh or frozen.
But these suggestions are all a bit obvious. I’m fond of a book by Jessica Seaton and Anna Colquhoun – Seaton is a co-founder of Toast, purveyors of nubbly knitwear – called Gather Cook Feast, and in it there’s a recipe for duck with spring vegetables, for which you need 12 asparagus stems (plus purple-sprouting broccoli, radishes, spinach and – again – broad beans). I’m nervous about cooking duck, and I must get over it, but this, a one-pot dish, is pretty failsafe.
My absolute favourite asparagus recipe, however, is by Jeremy Lee. I tore it out of a magazine years ago, and never looked back; even people who don’t like the vegetable (a shockingly large cohort) will, I’ve found, eat it done like this. You need to buy a very thin pastry called feuille de brick (get it online), which you paint on one side with a little melted butter. The blanched asparagus, sprinkled with parmesan and seasoned, is then wrapped in it like a cigar, and baked in the oven. It sounds slightly odd, written like this, but I promise you, it’s fantastic with drinks, or as a first course, and will happily accommodate – perish the thought! – even the most disappointing of spears.