Asparagus: not just your average phallic symbol
If you've never tried asparagus before, now is the perfect time to jump right in. The season has just opened and shortly you'll find every single restaurant in the city is serving this slightly rude looking vegetable.
Now, I'm not talking about those green, attractive stalks of succulent looking asparagus that we from the antipodes (and presumably other less-European destinations) are familiar with. The German asparagus stalk is long, fat and white. It is grown under piles of earth specifically so that it stays long, fat and white. It is an albino phallic symbol.
And it is taken extremely seriously here. No snickering, thank you.
The area around Beelitz, south of Berlin, is renowned for their asparagus, and the first of the season's Beelitzer Spargel hit the local supermarkets last week. One thing that is highly loved here is seasonal specialties, and asparagus rates right up there with pumpkin, Christmas cookies and summer holidays on Mallorca. When I said every restaurant is serving it, I wasn't joking.
Cold asparagus salad, warm asparagus salad, asparagus soup, ham and asparagus, boiled, stewed, sautéed, blanched.... the list is endless. I haven't yet found an asparagus dessert, an asparagus wine, or an asparagus-based cocktail, but I'm sure that's just because I haven't been looking hard enough.
If you have access to a kitchen here though, I would recommend trying the basic: peel the asparagus and chop the bottom ends off, boil for 20 minutes and serve with melted butter or Hollandaise sauce and slices of ham. You'll find yourself wondering where you can get white asparagus back home.