We were told - and I kind of remembered - that Germany in springtime is caught in the throngs of asparagus madness. (FYI: when Germans say "asparagus" they always mean white. Green asparagus is a different vegetable altogether.)
On April 19 we saw a poster in front of a restaurant announcing the arrival of the delicacy: Spargel-Zeit ist hier! Asparagus time is here! When we got to the store it was already sold out, so we decided to eat our first asparagus of the season at a local restaurant in Prenzlauer Berg (where we live): the special, Asparagus with sauce Hollandaise, potatoes, smoked raw ham (similar to proscuito), and white wine. Yum! It tasted so good we asked for more. The waiter said he would see what he could do. Soon the cook appeared himself and brought more. He then told us that his asparagus comes from "Belize, of course! Where else?" That answer sort of confused us - considering that Belize is in the Carribbean -- but hey, it's Berlin where anything is possible. We left the restaurants confused, but happy.
A few days later when I when I wanted to cook the delicacy myself it suddenly dawned on me in the grocery store that the famous asparagus does not hail from Belize, but from Beelitz, a village or small town south east of Berlin. Every Berliner knows that the asparagus comes from Of Course, Beelitz, Where Else? Indeed, where else?...
From mid April through mid June Spargel cooking and eating becomes a national pastime. Particularly Berliners and Baderners (I'm one from Freiburg) go nuts about asparagus, probably because their areas grow more than any others in Germany. Just about every restaurant, bistro, brunch café, and eatery has at least one dish of asparagus on their menu. Many have pages of asparagus dishes, prepared in very different ways, some even with Schnitzel. Restaurants lure hungry tourists with signs like this one:
BTW, asparagus is much more than an aphrodisiac. Recently it was highly political: 180 kilograms of Beelitz asparagus were cooked for a luncheon of news correspondents and politicians from Berlin and the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg. (Remember: Berliner versus Badener Asparagus!) With all that yummy asparagus eating the politicians saw a good opportunity to present their views. So, the Social Democrat (more like a US Democrat) said that asparagus harvesting could afford to pay minimum wage, while the Christian Democrat (more akin to a US Republican) insisted that all that paperwork would kill the small time asparagus farmers. Most likely, no matter how good the asparagus, the opinions about whose State produces the better-tasting vegetable remain unchanged. Badeners are convinced that THEIR asparagus from Schwetzingen in Baden trumps the Berliner Beelitz Spargel.... While the Berliners and Brandenburgers believe the THEIRS....
To me, they taste exactly the same... But as someone who comes from Baden, but lives in Berlin, even if for a short while only, I prefer to stay neutral...
But that's not enough. Every May Beelitz has a popular Asparagus Festival in the form of a gigantic cook-out. This year 1,500 guests registered for the event, but when 15,000 showed up the mayor and town police decided to cancel it for security reasons. The same event is now planned in a huge park near here, with proper security preparations. Cooks from as far as Japan, Iran, Thailand and many other countries will present their way of cooking white asparagus. Needless to say Bill and I are tempted to try some of those recipes...
Yes, and here the best version.... home-cooked...
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