Spear Yourself More Asparagus

A Seasonal Food That Comes in Two Designer Shades

One can find asparagus all year long, but whether from local farmers in New York City’s Union Square Greenmarket or Paris’s Raspail market or restaurants with seasonal market menus, there’s nothing that tastes like spring asparagus. Somewhere, not far from you, the real thing is to be had, ready to compensate for the effort with flavor that is to the supermarket variety as dairy-fresh whipped cream is to Cool Whip.

I’ve loved asparagus since childhood. It’s no surprise: the agreeable rituals and foods we discover as kids remain reference points throughout life (mothers and fathers, take note). In those days, only white asparagus was available. Grown out of sunlight (limiting photosynthesis) and more delicately flavored than the green variety more common in the States, the white stalks were a Sunday lunch treat. My mother would make a mayonnaise from scratch and blanch the asparagus at the last moment, serving them as an appetizer. We each had four to six stalks to dunk in the mayonnaise with our fingers, sucking and chewing till we reached the inedible fibrous end. At the end of the course we’d dunk our fingers in the rince-doigts, a little bowl of water with a slice of lemon (to cut the grease) floating in it. It’s the subject of many jokes (mostly apocryphal, no doubt) about confused guests uncertain whether to drink from the bowl. But when your fingers are sticky with asparagus and mayonnaise, it is not hard to figure out what the rince-doigts is for.

I discovered green asparagus when I came to New York, and my first experience was actually not a happy one, although color had nothing to do with it. Wanting to show off our West Village digs, we invited Edward’s sister and her husband to lunch one Saturday in spring. At the market, I had fetched a few bunches (always make sure they are not droopy or browning and that the flowering ends are shut tight). I had decided to make a one-course brunch, asparagus quiche sans dough, whose delicious simplicity many American friends had enjoyed immensely. Eggs and asparagus go splendidly together (in fact, a simple poached egg makes a nice fausse hollandaise, when whipping up a mayonnaise seems too ambitious for the boiled-asparagus appetizer), and some bacon cubes provide extra tang and color. But when the large white ceramic dish came out of the oven and we sat down to eat, I saw an uncomfortable look on my sister-in-law’s face. She was the first person I’d ever met who hated asparagus. I made her an omelet as Edward, sheepish at not having remembered, poured more wine.

Food aversions and allergies seem much more common in America than in France, where in many years of entertaining I’ve suffered relatively few such faux pas. You do get the occasional youngster allergic to (or perhaps just grossed out by) seafood. Still, á chacun son gout, and since we are preaching a gospel of tastes, it’s only right to honor those of our friends. So if you are serving an all-or-nothing dish, especially using a potential allergen, pay heed. (Believe it or not, a French friend of mine is allergic to garlic! Anything is possible.)

Now that I’m fortunate enough to spend a few days in Paris and Provence each March, I can live on asparagus for a week. (Variety is key to the French woman’s gastronomy, but the obsessive enjoyment of a particular food briefly in season is no sin, provided the food is not an offender, full of fat or processed sugar. The good news is that almost all vegetables are fair game for occasional monomania.) Fresh green asparagus can be as delicious as our white variety (though the latter still seems more sophisticated when served in the United States). I simply boil or steam them, adding a piece of salted butter (the famous Guérande is itself a luxury) and a touch of freshly ground pepper to the cooked, drained spears, then serve them with some protein, which becomes secondary as I feast on the asparagus. One blessing of seasonal vegetables is that they allow you to be satisfied with smaller amounts of protein—high-energy, low-fiber food that, regardless of Atkins and South Beach advice, can make you fat if taken too liberally without the perverse restriction of carbohydrates. In fact, try to eat your protein first to slow digestion and promote satiety; if you come to think of it as the “side” and the vegetables as the main dish, you will be cluing into a very common trick by which French women stay slim.