NWR Silly little things that delight you

Cloched is a word if I use it :) I am not the head gardener - I am just the under gardener and machinery operative and hole digger. Mrs AJT puts glass frame things (hence cloche) over her early asparagus (as opposed to late asparagus) and the kitchen garden is south facing and so gets full sun all day. Brings things on smartish. I think she has some in a big cold frame too.

White asparagus is in my humble opinion immeasurably better than green asparagus. More delicate flavour. Mrs AJT's mother grows it in big enough quantities for market in a corner of the vineyard in Germany, and so we usually get plenty. I love it in plenty of good butter with a hint of garlic and sel de gris.
 
AJ Temple said:
White asparagus is in my humble opinion immeasurably better than green asparagus.
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I think of them as two almost entirely different vegetables rather than one being better than the other. Green is easier to prepare but importantly is much more easily available here, and white keeps even less well than green in transit so that I don't get to eat much of it.
 
Thom Blach said:
I think of them as two almost entirely different vegetables rather than one being better than the other. Green is easier to prepare but importantly is much more easily available here, and white keeps even less well than green in transit so that I don't get to eat much of it.
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Indeed, they are very different animals. I prefer the texture and flavour of green asparagus and make a pilgrimage every year to pick from a farm in south Oxfordshire. Eating it on the day it is picked is such a treat. I’ve eaten the white stuff a lot in the Südtirol where they go mad for it.
 
I am told by my MIL (she has a couple of hectares of asparagus beds in fact) that the white and green are the same plant, not a different vegetable at all, but grown differently where the white one is not exposed to sunlight, but the green one is not. Not sure how that is achieved - it was a bit confusing when she explained it - as if the white stays underground. There are different varieties as with most veg now. She also grows purple asparagus in two varieties: Burgundine and Pacific Purple. I've only tasted the latter and it is significantly sweeter than green, and also crops much better in the vineyard than green apparently. My wife is growing some Burgundine in one of her cold frames so we should be able to try that this year.
 
Growing the plant under soil means that it is not exposed to light which is necessary to stimulate the formation of chlorophyll, hence no green. I’ve heard this called “forcing” but wonder if “blanching” is the better term.

I love both green and white, and even purple, but the latter is only worthwhile if served raw (sliced fine) as it turns green when cooked
 
Ken Oliver said:
Growing the plant under soil means that it is not exposed to light which is necessary to stimulate the formation of chlorophyll, hence no green. I’ve heard this called “forcing” but wonder if “blanching” is the better term.

I love both green and white, and even purple, but the latter is only worthwhile if served raw (sliced fine) as it turns green when cooked
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Or maybe etiolated?
 
Paul J a i n e s said:
Totally weird comparisons. This one today in the Guardian.

"A SpaceX Falcon rocket launched the lander, which is about the size of a hippopotamus...."

I'm going to start using totally weird comparisons from now on.
"How far is it?"
"About 45,000 eels"

tbh, probably as scientific as the Imperial system
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The hippopotamus is a ludicrously imprecise unit of measurement. What sex is it? What age? Is it a fine specimen or a runt? How well-fed? Typical Grauniad.

When I was at school our physics master was scathing of anyone who cited a quantity without also specifying the unit of measurement. “56 what?” he’d say: “Yards of tripe? Buckets of steam?”
 
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