Springtime Asparagus

Food lovers don’t look at the calendar to see when spring starts, they look at the ground. When asparagus begins poking up, spring has begun. We’ve waited 11 months or so for the incomparable taste of freshly picked asparagus, which, like fresh-caught salmon, tastes far different from store-bought and, heaven forbid, canned.

For a few weeks we will eat asparagus every way we can: in pasta and salad, baked in quiche, dipped in dip, cold spears picked out of refrigerator containers, roasted in the oven or grilled outside, stirfried with soy, simmered in coconut milk.

Fresh asparagus comes from your garden, or the farmers’ market, or from folks like Carla Gerding, a Henry County farmer who grows asparagus for sale. Gerding sells it directly from her Royal Station Farm (502-947-0541), starting at the end of March, “if the weather is warm,” she says, until Derby if it remains cool enough. Six or seven weeks is all you can expect from asparagus season in Kentucky.

Gerding never peels her asparagus, and is reluctant to recommend a time for steaming it. “Some people won’t eat something unless it is wilted, and others like it raw ... between that and the size of the asparagus, that is just a tricky question. I, personally, like it when it turns bright green and is just beginning to cook the spear,” she says.

So will eating asparagus leave you with aftereffects described centuries ago by Ben Franklin as “a disagreeable odor”? Asparagus spears contain compounds that, as they are eliminated from the body, can be detected by some people and not detected by others. Or perhaps are perceived by some and not perceived by others. The science isn’t clear. But you know who you are.