THE EARTHY, UNEARTHLY JOYS OF WHITE ASPARAGUS.

We love green asparagus, but wow, Tasmanian white asparagus is mystical.

I say ‘mystical’ because it’s a lot harder to grow than green asparagus, and can be difficult to get hold of. It’s rare and precious, and not going to turn up on your supermarket shelf any time soon. It is, however, turning up RIGHT NOW on the menus of some of the top restaurants across Australia (including Hobart’s Institut Polaire below), if you are that way inclined.

White asparagus grows in the dark, buried in soil, deprived of sunlight and warmth. Without light, it can’t produce chlorophyll and turn green. It remains a pale, ghostly white, tinged sometimes with violet, sometimes with a golden sheen.

The season, as you can imagine, is fleeting. Three weeks, maybe four.

It’s not so much a vegetable, as an event.

The flavour is… intense. Other-worldly. Nutty, with a delicate sweetness and a razor- edge slash of back-to-earth bitterness. Not like green asparagus at all, but a different vegetable entirely.

The emergence of white asparagus, at the height of spring, is something relatively new for us in Australia to celebrate. In Germany, Belgium, Amsterdam and across Europe, it has long been known as white gold, and the prince of spring, and is worth chasing from market to menu if you find yourself there in season.  I fell hard for it in Brussels, Antwerp and Ghent last May as I tootled around Belgium on local trains, and have been dreaming of it ever since.

I took this pic at Kline, a gorgeous, heart-felt, hand-made, neighbourhood diner in Brussels that should be on your shortlist. That smoked egg sauce, divine.

Then this week, I had just landed in Hobart for a whirlwind few days with Business Events Tasmania when I received a text from Julian Parisi of the famous Parisi fruit-and-veg-and-so-much-more family in Sydney.  “Letting you know the Tasmanian white asparagus season has now kicked off.”

We’d recently been discussing our mutual love and respect for these ghostly white spears, and he had promised to let me know.

“Great” I texted back. “I’m in Hobart, so I know exactly what to order.”

The joy of being in Tasmania (Lutruwita) is that good produce spreads faster than hot gossip.  Go to any good place – and I went to many good places – and the chefs will have leapt upon the chance to show off this extraordinary produce.

Richard and Belinda Weston of Weston Farm are behind this great leap forward for Australian produce, partnering with Tom Barnham and Jenna Howlett in the ‘slow food’ endeavour, and taking off the 2023 Unearthed award in 2023’s delicious. Harvey Norman Produce Awards.

(If you ever want to know what’s really going on with great Australian produce, just look up the latest awards and feast your mind on the possibilities; it’s the very best and most exciting food in Australia.)

To prep: “Peeling is essential” says Richard. “The outer layer has a protective coating that helps the spear push through the earth. Peel it back to reveal the true, earthy deliciousn ess within.” He suggests peeling from the top down – if you peel from the bottom up, it can impart some of the bitterness of the base of the stalk. Small, young spears don’t need peeling at all, so make an executive judgement.

To cook: Keep it simple. A frypan of boiling salted water, three minutes. Drain, toss back into the dry pan with butter and sea salt.

To buy: Not easy, not cheap and not available to everyone, but you CAN buy online by the kilogram from Parisi Sydney, who will deliver locally. And if you live in Hobart and surrounds, Weston Farm offer two grades of retail packs to the public; direct from the farm for now, but we are hoping for more widespread distribution as the season ramps up.

White asparagus lends itself to classic preparations. A soft beurre blanc butter sauce, or beurre noisette (burnt butter). A gentle miso dressing. Just butter and oil. A touch of Dijon. And I LOVE how it is served in Germany with waxy potatoes and a couple of furls of smoky ham. I also love their name for it: Spargelzeit! Heaven.

In Tassie, I had it multiple ways. At Peppina, the bustling flagship restaurant of The Tasman (fabulous place to stay; a wonderful mix of contemporary and heritage); the kitchen cleverly mixes lightly grilled white and green asparagus in a salady toss of local goat curd and candied walnuts.

The Agrarian Kitchen in New Norfolk is my pick for the best restaurant in Australia for its commitment to time and place, its incredibly satisfying but still elegant food, and its entire living-and-breathing approach towards cooking from where you are, with what you have.

 So, of course they are doing white asparagus right now, pairing it with the fattest, thickest, greenest spears on a floating cushion of potato miso and whey.

Institut Polaire is a charming wine bar and gastronomic hang-out near the harbour, where Louise Radman serves Tasmania’s finest alongside Nav Singh’s lively, full-of-energy Domaine Simha wines. They’re the sort of wines that taste exactly as their nose suggests (to explain that, many wines do a pivot between their aroma and their taste; these stay true). Their white asparagus with the lightest, butteriest beurre blanc and black beads of avruga caviar crawling over it like ants at a picnic, is an absolute pleasure and privilege to eat.

And at Pitzi, the lovely little wine and pasta bar opened by another of my favourite restaurants, Fico, I had a gorgeous dish of white asparagus rolling in Tongola Curdy, a lightly lemony fresh cheese, strewn with bucketloads of herbs.

White asparagus mania is not confined to our most southern state. Sydney is going mad for the stuff – note Jeffrey de Rome’s white asparagus and stuffed morels with fennel pollen at Mimi’s, and with lobster, no less, at The Cut.

In South Australia’s Magill Estate Restaurant, owner and exec chef Scott Huggins does something completely dreamy by pairing white asparagus with a ridiculously luxurious selection of Oscietra caviar teamed with rainbow trout roe, Murray Cod roe and finger lime, bound in a buttery bearnaise made with “the white Grange” of Penfolds Yattarna, woo hoo.

He couldn’t decide if he liked the asparagus better raw or cooked, so did both, blanching the top half only, followed by a moment on the wood-fired grill.

We’re not all going to be able to taste white asparagus, but it’s such a very strange and beautiful thing that I think we can all take vicarious pleasure, at least, in the fact that it exists at all.

Thanks for dropping by! And as always, thanks for your comments and suggestions. Special thanks to Terry for not ‘snapping’ every time I ordered white asparagus, hehe. And to Business Events Tasmania for showing off the corporate event possibilities of their island state with such passion, something I look forward to writing about in the Financial Review forthwith.

I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the lands and waters upon which I work, live, cook and play; the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respects to Elders past and present, and to the continuing strength and resilience of First Nations people, communities and cultures.