Dreamy, divine asparagus

Published date03 December 2022
Growing up, asparagus was an unimaginable luxury

Something to dream of eating in high-ceilinged, white-tableclothed restaurants with benign maitre d’s and silver sauceboats of melted butter.

Despite living within a short drive of the Vale of Evesham, I didn’t taste a single spear until I worked in a grand restaurant, where we nicked the odd one from the silver salvers on the way to the dining room.

To this day, it still feels like a luxury.

I had little idea, then, of what goes into getting a bunch into the shops. The hand-harvesting on bended knees; the care that pickers must take to protect the crown, each spear cut just below the surface of the soil with their trusty asparagus knife and its V-shaped blade.

Neither did I know anything of the care taken to get the spears to market with their fragile tips intact. I...

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