FORAGING (Languedoc)

I have acquired a new talent, to add to my foraging list, a list that so far comprises of blackberries, teeny weeny wild strawberries and sloes for sloe gin, I can now identify and reap the harvest of wild asparagus. Not being a big fan of shop bought asparagus - over priced and under-flavoured, the wild variety has been a revelation, sweet tasty little things. OK it does, given the chance grow to the same proportions as the cultivated kind but most of what we found yesterday was a little frond in comparison.

 
A glorious March day, we set off for a rendezvous with fellow asparagus hunters in the village of Azillanet, the purpose was to collect wild asparagus to be used at the 'Omelette de Paques' event on Easter Monday. The first couple of kilometres walk provided very, very little - about half a dozen stalks between 18 odd people, not much of a feast then, indeed there were 80 people expected for the monster omelette, so boy were they not going to be impressed with the vegetarian content.
Lesson no.1 the wild asparagus is stimulated to throw up shoots if it resides in mown ground/verges. Well all the prickly asparagus plants we found hadn't bothered to stimulate themselves. We were beginning to loose interest and just enjoy a dander on a glorious day, curses I'd forgotten my sunglasses and it hadn't even entered my head to bring sun lotion.

 

The rest of the team have disappeared off into the bushes.

 

But then a team member divulged some top secret information, maybe somewhat begrudgingly giving up the location of his secret stash of wild asparagus bushes? or then again showing off his skill as the alpha male of the hunter/gatherer party?? Over there, on the next hill, a piece of woodland that had been burnt, so giving the asparagus the urge to repopulate and take over the world, well that bit of hillside anyway.

 

 

One by one we became attuned to spotting the shoots, someone had been there before us so a lot of shoots were 'shot' already, but as we gleaned our way up the hillside, getting rather blackened by the charred tree remains, the bags started to fill, THERE WOULD BE A FEAST!

 

 

What the plant looks like.

 

A wee bit we gathered for ourselves....

 

 

sorry, poor photo, trimmed on the chopping board, and .....

 

sautéed for a couple of minutes in butter, tasty - we are converted.

 

Now all we have to do is find a patch of asparagus a bit closer to home, and never, never reveal our sources.