Asparagus

Musings on a special ingredient

I’m not sure the first time I had asparagus, I’m sure I was already a grown man though. Growing up on the south side of Chicago in the 70s and 80s, we didn’t eat a whole lot of fresh vegetables. My mom usually bought canned or frozen. In the summer though, most of the people in my neighborhood had gardens and grew their own vegetables, usually tomatoes and zucchini. Everyone made canned tomato sauce or zucchini bread during the summer. But asparagus is in season in the spring and I don’t recall ever seeing asparagus except in pictures or on cooking shows. To a lower middle class kid from Chicago asparagus was as exotic as an elephant, I knew they existed but never saw any in person. Of course I had heard that eating a lot of it would turn your urine bright green, that much I knew.

Once I became a professional cook, I quickly became acquainted with a lot of ingredients I had never been exposed to before, langoustines, squid ink pasta, belgian endive, fava beans, veal sweetbreads, and asparagus. I learned how to trim it, blanche it, and season it. We did this dish with blanched asparagus and a fontina fondue, topped with shaved white truffles. No it wasn’t light. It tasted ok but I didn’t think it was all that special. The fontina fondue was over the top delicious, but the asparagus seemed like a vehicle for the extra rich sauce. As I continued to cook, I worked with asparagus off and on in many restaurants, usually as a side with some kind of protein.

In the spring of 2006, I made my way to Green City Market to see what was happening and if there were anything I might be interested in using at the restaurant where I worked. I had gone to the market before and become enamored with it, but hadn’t yet discovered all the riches there. It takes some investigating and talking to farmers to find the good stuff. A lot of other chefs were telling me that there was asparagus there that I definitely should check out. Of course I was skeptical, after all asparagus is asparagus right? But then I remembered a couple of weeks before I had had arugula there that forever changed my view on that humble green. It was so fresh, bright, and peppery my mouth didn’t know what hit it. I think I literally threw my head back when I tasted it and immediately ordered 5# to take back to the restaurant with me. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but it was too good to pass up. I remembered that feeling and decided I’d check out this asparagus. The name of the farmer was Mick Klug and his farm was in St. Joseph Michigan. I made my way to his table with the gangnam tablecloth and forest green bunches of asparagus displayed there, alongside was purple asparagus as well, something I had never seen or even knew existed. I grabbed a lone spear of asparagus and put it in my mouth, not expecting much. What I tasted was the sweet earth goodness. It had such a deep minerally quality, it tasted like asparagus squared. In other words it ws delicious.

Since that time it has been the only asparagus I will use or put on a menu and I know a lot of chefs feel the same way. As I type this I just read an email they sent me saying they have only three weeks left in the season and I just put it on the menu. That’s what cooking with the seasons is about though. And in a few weeks that dish will come off the menu and another with replace it until next year.

Grilled asparagus, chipotle tahini dressing, sesame seeds, queso fresco, on the menu at Libertad for a few more weeks.