margaret wrote on Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:06:25 -0500:

??>> And here is something interesting for Margaret and other
??>> Manhattan denizens:
??>> <http://nymag.com/restaurants/recipes/inseason/30612/>.
??>>
??>> And
??>> <http://www.labellecuisine.com/Articl...ragus__the_roy
??>> al_vegetable.htm>
??>>
??>> Victor

ms> I believe that the American Green Asparagus are grown for
ms> American Taste and ease of cooking and eating them. They
ms> have little or no resemblance to the European white
ms> Asparagus that I remember. The taste is completely
ms> different and much more of its stem can be eaten. The
ms> European ones have little edible stem. We used to eat the
ms> "heads" and scrape off whatever "meat" we could by pulling
ms> the Asparagus stem, which was very woody, through our
ms> teeth, to scrape off every edible bit.
ms> I have a feeling that what I just wrote is not very
enlightening. (

I can't really say whether European asparagus is different from
that grown for the American market (being specific since it may
come from Chile etc). I prefer the taste of white asparagus to
that of green but the difference does not justify the extra cost
to me. I have a similar opinion about celery. I prefer my
asparagus to be pencil thin requiring only snapping off a small
amount before cooking. I really can't be bothered scraping thick
asparagus but some people like it a lot and I even saw some
recently as a featured item in a "gourmet" supermarket that had
a diameter of about an inch.

James Silverton
Potomac, Maryland

E-mail, with obvious alterations:
not.jim.silverton.at.verizon.not