Pushing spring a bit

Every year, just about this time, my taste buds get restless. It's still roots and tubers, and limited numbers of those. All the leeks are gone. This year, celery root is in good supply. If I see another one of those gnarly roots, I may lose it. Bags and bags of beets in the fridge that I'm ignoring. Oh, I can always make something tasty with potatoes, but where's a vegetable that TASTES like GREEN.

Then the first southern california asparagus show up.

I will admit, right up front, that this is a poor substitute for the wonderful "Jersey grass" that we'll have available in about two months. When that comes in, we could wind up eating asparagus every day of the week. One day steamed, one day in a salad, one day in a soup, and so on and so forth. The green ones. We don't really see "spargel," those kind of weird, all white asparagus that make me feel like I'm eating space ship food, and that's fine with me. But for now, those veggies from the twin cities of "Calexico" and "Mexicali" are coming in (Yes, it's true. One is in Mexico, the other is in California, right across from each other. Serious agriculture this time of year).

I know I COULD get asparagus all winter long, from Peru or heaven knows where. When the full season comes in locally, I'll go on my "don't by South American asparagus " rant, but for now, I'll just introduce the issue of these wonderful veggies.

And I will also confess that, when I was a kid, I turned my nose up at them. But they were CANNED. I think they were the inspiration for every green slime movie that was ever made, and I would NOT eat them. Or eggplant. Or artichokes. But Nana used to stand there and shake her finger "Ascolta ragazzo. One day, these will be your favorite vegetables.

She was right. I LOVE asparagus. Even though it has that, ahem, side effect. Do you know what I'm talking about? You don't. Oh.

Well... see... there's a molecule in asparagus that some of us can process, and some of us cannot. And it's not like those molecules in beans that some of us do well with and others don't, except in one way: it stinks. And you see, well.... if you drink a bit too much water or any liquid with your meal, you'll start smelling it sooner rather than later.

EWWWWWWWWWWWW. But you know what? I don't care. I love them too much.

When you read food writers on asparagus, they seem to fall into the "thick stalk" and "thin stalk" camps. Know what I think? Stalk, schmalk. If you know what you've got, you know how to cook them. So , how DO you cook them?

As little as possible. But you do have to cook them. With all due respect to the raw foodists out there, raw asparagus isn't all that tasty. I find it very hard to digest as well. So I think you need to do SOMETHING with them. With the thicker ones, I peel them with a vegetable peeler, almost all the way up and down the stem. And then I steam them. Ideally, you steam them standing up in a pan, so that the bottoms, which are thicker, get more cooking than the tips, which are thinner. You can get a special b asket for that.

Gimme a break. If you're THAT obsessive about the cooking, what you should do is cut them up before hand, because you're going to cut them on your plate anyway (unless you're ill mannered like me and you pick them up whole and put them down your gullet. Nana would faint). And if you're going to serve them cut up, then cut the thicker pieces, put them in boiling salted water first, wait for thirty seconds or so, then add the middle parts, and then finally, the tips. Each gets thirty seconds, so you've been cooking the toughest section for a minute and a half, the middle for a minute, and the last bit, for half a minute. That's really all you need. You'll see the green kind of "bloom" on them and the flavor will come out. For me, a quick dressing of olive oil, or lemon juice is all I need with these, but you could put a sprinkle of parmesan on them, or you could toss some chopped nuts, or even use hollandaise ( we haven't made hollandaise yet, have we? Ok, we'll do that this week coming up. I promise. You'll want them for Easter). You can get a bit more elaborate, and make something right fine, by wrapping two or three of them in a piece of prosciutto, putting some fontina on top of that, and then broling them for a minute or two. Not THAT's good eating, it's getting fancy, and you should be doing that when you get tired of just plain asparagus (which I never do).

Now I talked about the thick ones. Well, for the thin ones, I use the trick that everyone is taught: hold the asparagus horizontally, one hand on the tip, and the other on the base (3 dimensional enough for ya, SR?). Bend it. And it will SNAP where a tough part meets a tender part. Almost always. What you'll find when this happens is that you get a lot of waste, but save those tough parts. They make good stock for things like asparagus soup, and asparagus risotto (yup, we'll make those when the Jersey grass comes in). And then just use the tender parts the way I told you how to use the peeled, whole ones.

If you make extra, or you have extra, you can make a lovely salad of asparagus and greens, with a lemon type of vinaigrette: use one part lemon juice to three parts olive oil, a bit of mustard and salt, and you've got an interesting, unique salad. Perhaps it's even worth making the asparagus to do this (I think so, and do it a lot).

So it's a ways to Spring. We'll be doin the "wearin of the green" next week, but the "eatin of the green" has got to start. I'm still waiting for dandelions, and the other goodies of early spring, but for now, it will have to be "california here I come." We're going to have some tonight with duckbreasts. Dontcha wish you were comin over? I got plenty....