Springtime in Munich brings budding trees, allergies, occasional rain clouds, aaannddd . . .
Weiss Spargel!
Weiss Spargel, also known as white asparagus, is only available for a few months out of the year and boy do these Bavarians consume it. The Germans love their weiss spargel! Restaurants, in a addition to their daily specials, will have a white asparagus menu complete with appetizers, main entrees, and desserts.
Grocery stores set up their weiss spargel machines and on peak times the line to pick and prepare your asparagus can get pretty long!
As you can see in the above photo, it takes a trained technician (possessing a Doctorate in veggies, perhaps?) to assist the common consumer in achieving this delectable vegetable.
One starts at the front and chooses their white asparagus. A raw asparagus is extremely thick, about 1 inch in diameter. The technician then feeds the asparagus into the ginormous machine where it spins it on a vegetable lathe, removing the tough outer layers, all the while spraying it with water to keep the asparagus moist. When done, the asparagus pops out the other end of the machine where the customer then scoops it into their produce bag because the technician, well, frankly, he's not trained to do that.
Other smaller grocery stores, sell white asparagus, but you have to peel it yourself at home. (What?! Without a trained technician?!?!)
With all the hullaballoo around this highly-sought after vegetable, I simply had to try it.
What did I think?
Drummmmmrooollll please!
Um.
Er.
Mediocre at best.
White asparagus can best be described as having zero flavor (and unfortunately doesn't even take on the flavor of its accompanying food) with the texture of green asparagus/scallops. Hmmm.
Oh well, chalk it up to experience!
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