Asparagus
Asparagus may be the most revered of Britain’s seasonal produce; the neatly bound bundles of thick purple-green spears pretty much scream Daylesford Organic. It probably doesn’t help that their spiritual homeland is the Vale of Aylesbury, firmly in the garden of England, born of the sort of fine dirt that will never elect a Labour MP.
More seriously, absent our strange societal obsession with them, it’s a fascinating plant. Growing in crowns that take several years to come to fruiting maturity, its metabolic byproducts - like generational change - are imperceptible to nearly half the population, whilst stinking to high heaven for the rest.
Asparagus also carries a stigma of being supposedly very hard to pair with wine. I’ve never really understood this, even back in the day when the only wines that people of taste would countenance were French, there was always Loire Sauvignon Blanc. The proletariat grassiness of Touraines for when there was a herby sauce, the flintlock struck match of the aristocratic Pouilly Fume and Sancerre for when hollandaise is present.
I think of asparagus when I think of Friulano, that dirty and smoky bastard Sauvignon that the Slovenians and Friulanos hold so dear. Its previous name, Tocai (an old plagiarism of the Hungarian region of Tokaj), was raised to the status of local hero and later reversed to Jakot in a bit-thumb gesture to the forces of officialdom. Everytime I see Jakot on a label I see a visible snarl recalling decades of bloody attempted external control, and its present popularity is a sign of renewed local pride. The buried Slovenian crown breaking ground once more.
Friulano (Tocai) has a strange swagger, bringing to mind the cool moss covered stones of abandoned Welsh castles, the turbidity of algal pond water, and, at it’s best, the cool microbial smoulder of clay heavy soils.
Like most green vegetables, asparagus has a natural affinity with butter and by extension almost anything smoky and fishy. Grate a load of bottarga on top, happy days. Fold some smoked haddock into your hollandaise, bob on. Handily our friend Friulano is no slouch here, indeed even its most extreme expressions will work. Dario Princic or Stanko Radikon’s Jakots would be quite glorious with a finnan haddie flaked through butter over some coal-charred asparagus. A pairing that would give me no small pleasure, it would be marrying the pride of the home counties with what’s as close to an olfactory statement of Scottish independence as possible (then having the ceremony presided over by one of the most intransigent vinous statements of place and tradition Western Europe has produced).
In her graphic novel cookbook Dirt Candy, Amanda Cohen imparts some advice regarding vegetable cookery. You should either barely cook them, or really roast them, hard, beyond the point where you think they’re done. That way you get all the sugars caramelised, really transforming the vegetable. Asparagus is often badly treated in this regard. So often boiled beyond ‘crunchy tender’ into the land of wan and limp, the proud spears arrive flaccid and sad. It was with this in mind I decided to substitute them for green beans in the famous Szechuan ‘dry fried’ dish.
A long, hard wok fry blisters the spears, turning their skin a papery greenish brown. The texture is softened but the flavour seems amplified, and chopped pickled mustard greens complement them well, their acidity adding snarl to the asparagus’ politesse. A sauce made with Shaoxing wine, soy and piles of chilli crisp throws in great punches of heat and umami. We’re now a long way from the Vale of Aylesbury, however umami and ma la, the hot and numbing joy of Sichuan cuisine, is definitely a topic for another day.