Ingredient: Asparagus
Asparagus is delicious, but it makes your wee smell strange. The smell can appear within about 15 minutes of eating asparagus, but, weirdly, only around half of people have the gene that makes them able to smell it.
The British asparagus season runs from St George’s Day on 23rd April to Midsummer’s Day on 21st June, which is only around eight weeks. The Vale of Evesham in Worcestershire has been the heartland of English asparagus for generations, and growers there are fiercely proud of their short window.
Each spear is cut by hand, and while established plants can shoot up 10cm in a single day during warm spells, the crowns take two or three years to mature before you can harvest anything at all.
Asparagus is packed with folate, which your body needs for healthy cells and is especially important for pregnancy and for repairing our cells through our master antioxidant, glutathione. It also contains prebiotic fibre that feeds the good bacteria in your gut.
These days in supermarkets, you will mostly see quite young, thin asparagus spears, but if you get older ones, snap off those woody ends first. It’s often at its best just steamed and served with melted butter or roasted with olive oil and a sprinkle of flaky sea salt. Asparagus is also great added to risottos or stirred into creamy orzo.
