Readers of this column seem to be interested in food, considering that the most feedback I have ever received arrived after I wrote about growing garlic and soaking beans.
So, here’s another one.
It’s asparagus season in this part of the world, and for those of us who enjoy eating this slender vegetable, what a glorious season it is.
Jodie Mirosovsky, one of the writers of our ever-popular TEAM column in the Farm Living section, apparently agrees because she includes asparagus in this week’s column, which can be found on pages 18-19.
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We tried growing our own asparagus years ago but must have done something wrong. We harvested two or three spears a year for the first year or two, and then the plants died.
Since then we’ve had to be content with picking up a bunch or two from the local farmers market, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
It’s a pretty straightforward vegetable to prepare: snap off the ends, give them a good wash and then select your cooking method, whether it be steamed, roasted or grilled.
However, a minor controversy is starting to develop around the first part of the process — the “snap off the ends” bit.
I’ve been a snapper as long as I’ve been cooking with asparagus.
When we first started doing this, I read somewhere that you should snap at the place where the spear naturally wanted to snap. However, there were some in our household who thought that could get awfully wasteful if the asparagus was a naturally high snapper. As a result, I’ve made a real effort to impose my will on asparagus by snapping as low on the spear as possible.
But snapping is still how I roll.
Even Jodie’s column this week recommended snapping.
Apparently, however, a new way is emerging in the culinary world — peeling.
It’s not hard to find social media advice recommending peeling over snapping. For example, a website called Edible Communities argues that snapping is inaccurate, wasteful and just a little ugly.
Instead, it suggests cutting off only the very bottom end of the spear and then using a vegetable peeler to peel the lower half.
This might be hip and trendy, but I can’t imagine it catching on in our house any time soon.
