Bassano White Asparagus

Asparago Bianco di Bassano is a protected designation of origin, granted in 2007. It covers spears of the local variety Comune di Bassano, also called Chiaro di Bassano, grown in about twenty communes on the Brenta plain around Bassano del Grappa in the Veneto.

The part you eat is the turione, the spear that rises from the underground crown of the plant. The specification requires spears at least eighteen centimetres long, straight, with a tightly closed tip, and thick enough to exclude thin grades. The colour must be uniformly white from base to tip: no green, no violet.

That colour requirement is the whole thing. The asparagus is white not because of the variety but because of the absence of light. The spear grows inside a mound of earth and, while it stays in the dark, produces no chlorophyll. If the tip breaks the surface and catches sun for even a few hours, it turns violet and then green, and it is out of the designation.

The practical consequence is that you cannot harvest this crop by looking at the plant. You look at the soil. Which is why the picking is entirely by hand and cannot be mechanised at all.

Compared with the white asparagus of Germany and the Netherlands, Bassano is more tender, less fibrous, and carries a distinct bitter finish that locally counts as a virtue rather than a fault.

Delicate and faintly sweet, with a clean vegetal body and a bitter edge at the finish that is the point of white asparagus rather than a defect. Nothing like the grassy, sulphurous punch of green asparagus: quieter, rounder, closer to an artichoke heart or a young broad bean.

The texture is the argument. Properly peeled and cooked upright, the spear is dense and buttery from base to tip, with almost none of the fibre you get in a thick green stalk. It should be firm enough to hold when lifted with a fork and yield without stringiness.

The bitterness varies through the season: sharper in the cold early spears of March, milder and sweeter in the peak of late April. And there is the well-known effect on urine, caused by asparagusic acid, which about half the population can smell and the rest cannot, and it has nothing to do with quality.

Peel it. This is the step people used to green asparagus skip, and it ruins the dish: the skin of white asparagus stays tough however long you cook it. Lay the spear flat on the counter, run a vegetable peeler from two centimetres below the tip down to the base, rotating as you go, then trim a couple of centimetres off the bottom.

Cook it standing up. Tie the peeled spears into a bundle, stand them in a tall pan with salted water covering the lower two thirds, and let the tips steam above the water. Twelve to eighteen minutes depending on thickness. They are done when a knife slides into the base without force.

The Bassano dish is asparagi e uova. Hard-boil eggs, crush them roughly with a fork, dress with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper into a coarse sauce, and pour it over the warm spears. Nothing is blended and no mayonnaise is involved.

Other local uses: risotto, where the peelings and trimmings make the stock; spears with melted butter and grated Grana; under a poached egg; in a frittata; and with thin slices of sopressa, the local salami, which is the most Bassano thing on the list.

Waste nothing. Simmer the peelings and bases for half an hour, strain, and you have a sweet stock that is the foundation of the risotto.

Not long, and it is worth knowing that before buying. A spear is a growing shoot that carries on burning its own sugars after cutting: sweetness drops noticeably after two days and the fibres toughen by around the fourth. The best method treats it like a bunch of flowers. Trim half a centimetre off the base, stand the bundle upright in a container with two fingers of cold water, drape a bag loosely over the tips and keep it in the fridge, where it holds four or five days without going limp. Wrapped in a damp cloth in the vegetable drawer it manages three.

A sealed plastic bag with no holes traps the moisture the spears give off and they soften from the tip downwards. For longer keeping, blanch three minutes in boiling salted water, drop straight into iced water, dry thoroughly and freeze spread on a tray: eight months, after which they suit soups and risotto rather than being served whole. Cooked spears keep two days covered in the fridge, and the cooking water is stock.

White the whole way. The spear should be ivory from base to tip: a pink or violet tip means it saw daylight before it was cut, and a green tip means a different asparagus altogether. The tip has to be closed and tight, since scales opening out like a flower show a spear that had already begun to elongate, and that one will be fibrous. The bundle tied with a willow withy is the signature of the DOP and is not easy to imitate. Bases are cut flat at a single height and should look wet and full rather than dry, spongy or hollow at the centre.

Two field tests settle it. Rub two spears together: fresh ones squeak, while spears that have lost water slide silently. Bend one and it should snap with a clean crack. On the tag, look for Asparago Bianco di Bassano DOP with the European logo, the grower's name and an identifying number. German and Dutch Spargel, the white asparagus most shops abroad stock in spring, is a fine vegetable but not this one.

Fresh Bassano DOP asparagus essentially does not leave Italy: the season is twelve weeks, production is limited and almost all of it is eaten in the Veneto. In the growing area a one-kilo bunch runs 10 to 18 euro per kilo, opening high in March, dipping through the peak in April and May, then climbing again at the end.

Elsewhere in Italy it reaches 18 to 25 euro per kilo when it appears at all. Generic Veneto white asparagus without the designation sells for 4 to 8 euro per kilo, and the gap is real.

Abroad, what you will find in spring is German, Dutch, Spanish or Peruvian white asparagus at 6 to 12 dollars a pound in the US or 10 to 20 pounds a kilo in the UK. Italian delicatessens sometimes carry Navarra or Veneto spears in jars, which are the sensible off-season option.

When buying fresh, look for uniformly white spears with closed tips, a flat-cut base that is still moist rather than dry or hollow, and the willow tie that marks the DOP bunch. Rub two spears together: fresh ones squeak. And budget for the peelings: after trimming you keep 60 to 70 per cent of the weight, so a kilo feeds four, not six.

Bassano del Grappa in April and May, when the trattorie of the town and the surrounding villages run asparagus menus and the growers' show brings the DOP producers together. The old centre, Palladio's covered wooden bridge and the arcaded osterie make the rest of the day easy.

The villages on the plain (Rosà, Cassola, Tezze sul Brenta, Pove del Grappa) hold spring festivals where the fixed dish is asparagi e uova. That is the preparation to order, far more than a cream soup or a risotto.

Many farms in the area sell direct during the harvest and some take visitors into the fields. Watching a picker read a crack in the soil, dig down and cut blind with a narrow gouge explains the price better than any description.

One date to respect: cutting stops on 13 June. Arrive in late June and you will find the plants left to grow and no fresh asparagus anywhere.