Spargel is the German version of fresh sweet corn, only moreso.
You know how sweet corn, from a stand or picked fresh, is a different product compared to corn you buy in the store? How fresh white sweet corn is just....the best....with a little butter and salt?
Spargel, if you buy it in the store as "white asparagus," in the U.S. or maybe even outside of the southern half of Germany, is at best okay. Woody, tough, tasteless, dry.
but, if you get it fresh, from a roadside stand, here.....man oh man. The EYM and I had it boiled, cold marinated in viniagrette, creamed in soup, and then sauteed in butter (different spargel; not the same spargel). Just a little butter and salt, and that's as good as it gets. Which is what Garrison Keillor said about sweet corn.
UPDATE: A comment makes it clear that I was quite UNCLEAR above. What I meant was not that asparagus is corn, or that corn is asparagus. Rather, I meant that spargel plays a culturally central role in south German gastronomy, at least as important, and maybe more so, as sweet corn in the southern and midwestern U.S.
3 comments:
hm, I am surprised that "sweet corn" should be the same as "Spargel". As far as I know "Spargel" is asparagus, and "sweet corn" is "Mais" in German. But then, I am German and am sure about the "German", but not the "English"... :-)
But apart from that, I completely agree. There are few things that are as good as "Spargel" and some butter. Preferably, by the way, from the area around Schwetzingen, a small town near Heidelberg in the Rhine valley...
Oh, and add some thin slices of ham to round it up...
Reuters - woman beaten up over asparagus prices:
http://www.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idUSTRE54H5F320090518
I was making an analogy, not a definition.
Spargel plays a similar role, in southern Germany, as the role of sweet corn in the southern and midwestern US.
Still, you are correct that what I wrote was ambiguous. My bad.
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