Spargelzeit

There is a two month period from late April to late June that is known as Spargelzeit. Spargel is German for asparagus. Zeit is time. So Spargelzeit means the time for asparagus. Since asparagus is the first harvest of the year, it is connected with the end of cold temperatures and the coming of summer. Asparagus growing use to be centered in southern German. But with the advent of growing under plastic, the growing asparagus has now extended into the central Germany. So there are a couple of fields not far from us.

Asparagus here is not the skinny green shoots that we get in the USA. Rather they are thick, white shoots, the thicker the better. They have a woody outer layer pretty much the whole length of the shoot that must be removed with a vegetable peeler. The shoots are graded according to their thickness, length and roundness. This is basically an indicator of how much work is needed to prepare the shoots. The thicker shoots have more volume per surface area, therefore less peeling and less waste. Also if the shoot is not round (cylindrical is maybe a better word) they are harder to peel. But even the farmers will say, they all the grades taste the same.

We tend to buy the grade II that are a bit thicker than my thumb. Once they are peeled, it is simply a matter of boiling for 20 minutes. The traditional German meal shown in the slide show below would start with a pound of asparagus per person (that is before peeling). and would serve boiled potatoes and slices of ham to go with it. Melted butter would be available to pour over the asparagus and potatoes. We like lighter white wine with low acidity is idea. For this meal, we used sweet potatoes, but a hard potato, like red or Yukon gold, would be more traditional. We also used a  Riesling which is normally little too acidic, but we had just returned from Wehlen and wanted to drink one of the wines that we bought there.