If you are serving the asparagus on its own or with a dip, perhaps as a starter, then you can get a more intense flavour by grilling or roasting it. Lay the spears on a flat oven tray, sprinkle them very lightly with olive oil and salt flakes, and roast in a hot oven for four or five minutes. Cooking them under a grill, on a griddle pan, or on a barbecue, works too, but I think the oven gives a juicier result. Done either way, the asparagus will be crunchy, slightly browned and somehow more intense and sweeter than when boiled. You can’t leave it hanging around at this stage, nor can you cool it in water, so be sure that everything, and everybody, is ready before you put asparagus in the oven or under a grill.
When asparagus takes a partner, it really marries well. Classically, asparagus has an affinity with new potatoes, butter, lemon, chives, tarragon and with eggs of all kinds cooked any way. Asparagus is comfortable with a surprisingly wide range of cheeses, but has a special affinity with hard mature cheeses with some sweetness or the mellow sharpness of fresh goat’s or sheep’s cheeses.
Asparagus also loves a hint of rosemary or lemon thyme in an olive oil-based aïoli for dunking. In a twist on this, we sometimes replace the herbs in the aïoli with blood orange juice. It makes a striking starter that will make you appear to be very clever and modern. Be careful whom you try to impress, however, as quite a lot of people already know that this is not a new trick at all, but a classic combination from Malta. We found the inspiration for this version in Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book while looking for interesting things to do with blood oranges. The combination of orange and asparagus also works beautifully in a salad.
Seakale, a prince from the shoreline
Asparagus will remain at the top of the aristocratic pile for a while yet, but if there is a vegetable with the potential to match it for unique flavour and appearance, it is surely seakale.
Seakale has a dual personality of extreme characteristics. It is at once ancient and modern, both highly cultivated and utterly wild. It was eaten as a prized wild seashore plant around the coasts of much of Europe long before it was cultivated, and it has persisted as a favourite wild food still, for those lucky enough to know where to find it and who still appreciate its rugged qualities. And yet, it has for centuries also been grown as an exquisite garden vegetable. This transformation from rugged and wild to delicate and cultivated is achieved by the gardening practice known as blanching, whereby the young shoots of a plant are covered to keep the sunlight away. The stalks grow long and thin, with little foliage, and, most importantly, with a subtly delicious flavour and tender texture.
Perhaps in the renaissance of domestic vegetable growing, seakale will become once again, along with asparagus, one of the prized jewels of those who love to eat as much as they love to grow. However, I would urge anyone growing seakale to leave some of the plants uncovered, to be enjoyed as one of the most intense and succulent winter greens. This dual role is why seakale is the only individual variety of vegetable to feature twice in this book, both here and in the chapter ‘Growing in the dark’, where I look at the blanched version in more detail. If I had found any in the wild, it would have been featured in the ‘Wild pickings’ chapter too, but it has become very scarce in Ireland.
Although I did some research for this book (those who know more than me will have noticed, and I look forward to some witty letters), I tried not to do so much that it would discolour my approach to the vegetables I love. To be honest, after a while I had only a small handful of trustworthy books close by when I felt in need of facts. I’m a lazy reader, but still I began to see patterns of repetition in reference books, patterns that made me nervous.
The myth about seakale, repeated in so many books that it has practically become fact, is that it is ‘bitter and inedible’ as a green vegetable. This may be because it is so sublimely unique when blanched – an understandable extension of thought, if you like, but the myth is actually untrue. It is a myth that must have been promulgated by those who have never eaten unblanched seakale. Surely if you are going to say that something that grows easily in your climate is bitter and inedible, you should take a bite of it first?
Of course, it is necessary to accept the validity of expert sources when writing history or science, and there is a lot of both in gardening and food reference books. So there is bound to be repetition. But as little as I know about gardening, I came to realise very quickly the importance of trying to get to original sources of information. In that context, Joy Larkcom’s books, especially Grow Your Own Vegetables and Oriental Vegetables, are so idiosyncratic you just know that there is nothing in there that she hasn’t tested in her own field. Literally. Joy never wrote of seakale, but knowing her love of greens, you can be sure she would not have been able to resist testing it in the end.
I might well have gone on to propagate this notion too if I hadn’t had a call from Ultan, way too early one damp Monday morning in March. He had been diligently leaving the first year’s crop of seakale to grow out, unblanched. All the books tell you to do this simply to strengthen the crowns below ground, and so he did…sort of. Being a fiend for good greens, he kept looking at them, thinking they must be edible. In my interpretation of the scene, I imagine him drooling a little, maybe even a lot. Anyway, the night before (a wet, boring Sunday) he ate the damn things. No, not all of them, but enough to know the truth. Again, I imagine there was drooling, maybe even slobbering. I would have known about it immediately, except that I was out at a ‘fine’ restaurant eating crap food. Ah, the glorious joys of urban life.
The next day I collected some green seakale and cooked it for the first time. I admit I was a little nervous, especially of feeding it to my fifteen-year-old son. He’s a willing guinea pig, though I wouldn’t go so far as to say he trusts me completely. I even warned him that the literature describes this stuff as inedible in its green state.
In fact, there was no more than a trace of the bitterness that is written of in those dozens of books. All good greens have some bitterness, so if anything, the taste was a little milder than many of my favourite greens, such as sprouting broccoli or black kale. Seakale has the essential vibrant colour, and a softly melting but chewy texture. Sprouting broccoli is a good reference point for seakale. Pick it young, when the stems, the soft leaves and the budding flower heads are all edible. Discard the tough leaves and cook the rest in an open pan with a little water, just enough to keep it moist. When it is tender, dress it with olive oil, salt and pepper. Don’t leave any juices behind in the pan when you serve. Until you become bored with that, nothing more is called for. And yes, the fifteen-year-old liked it.
Next year we will have both green and blanched seakale. How cool is that?
Watering the cats and putting manners on the plants: the rainbow chard diaries
I spent ten days in late spring minding the house of friends who had gone off to France in a camper van that I didn’t expect to make it off the ferry. Oh well, to each their own sense of adventure. Mine was to live alone for ten days in their lovely old farmhouse with an acre or so of garden near the coast in West Cork. ‘Garden’ might be a bit of an understatement. It is more an exquisite arrangement of plants, the edible and the purely aesthetic, blended together in deliberate patterns but not fussily pristine. Parts of it are handsomely geometric, but look as though it might have happened by happy chaos, that it is simply the inherent beauty of nature that has caused it to fall together so perfectly. I know how much work goes into achieving that look. I say that as someone who fusses over plates and the appearance of food, and who likes the result to look as if it fell on to the plate in a pleasing but slightly off-centre sort of way.