Experience Italy in a way you never dreamed possible!
Foraging for Wild Asparagus - and Reminiscing
May 22, 2008
Abundant rain this spring has done the trick: wild asparagus are sprouting in our woods in abudance. These days, when I return home late afternoon from my guided tours, I often put on my high rubber boots and head for the woods in search of this woodland delicacy. I doubt the vipers are out as the weather is cool now but "boots-and-wild-asparagus" are a years-old habit. I used to gather the asparagus with my farm women neighbors. At times with Chiarina, sometimes with Mandina. They always wore high boots and made sure I did too. They also warned me always to carry a walking stick and to thrash it around the wild asparagus before reaching down among the rocks and dead leaves to break the green spears off. Vipers move into the cool of the woods in hot weather, they warned.
Tomorrow following an Assisi tour, my tour guests are joining us for dinner here in our home. I'm cooking an all-Umbrian dinner and this is the height of our wild aspargus season so I spent the morning foraging in our woods and just came back with a sizeable bunch. Now comes the decision: frittata agli asparagi, risotto agli asparagi or tagliatelle agli asparagi? (...or "guess what's coming for dinner?"!).
Many years ago, Chiarina, taught me how to use them in a delicious omelette or frittata agli asparagi. Afer an afternoon of asparagus-hunting with my farmwoman neighbor Mandina, she taught me to make risotto agli asparagi. But once I had learnt to roll out homemade pasta, there was no going back: tagliatelle agli asparagi became the family favorite.
As I was tramping through the woods this morning, I grinned as I remembered my surprise "woodland companion" when hunting asparagus many years ago: our first sheep, Sofie!
We had moved into our Umbrian farmhouse in September, 1975. Our first animal was a hen, given to us by our neighbor, Peppe, as thanks for having helped them at vendemmia, the grape harvest. When we helped Marino pick his olives, he gave us our first rabbit (pregnant... and that led to alot of rabbits!). Eventually we had quite a flock of chickens, ducks, geese, guinea fowl, turkeys which we raised for our own meat - and also sold. The rabbits, too, sold well and we even traded one for a wood-burning stove! Well, the stove was an old one and ready for the junkyard but we never would have made it through that first winter here on the land with just the heat of the fireplace.
Our first sheep? Sofie. She was my first birthday gift from Pino. He didn't pay much for her (we didn't have much: we moved to Umbria with 150,000 lire which may sound like a fortune but was really about $150). Aldo, the shepherd in our area, had been unable to sell Sofie to any of our farm neighbors. They were smart enough to know a BAD deal when they saw one! She was old, lame and arthritic (limping and hobbling) but she was pregnant (herein lay Pino's "investment"!).
Sheep are herd animals. They do not do well alone. Sofie bleated and bleated those first days after separation from Aldo's flock. When I staked her out on the chain, she hobbled around and around in agitated endless circles, bleating forlornly. I finally let her off the chain to wander freely in the fields.
Then one May day, I made pasta and needed a bit of asparagus. I put on my high rubber boots, picked up my walking stick and headed for the woods. I soon had quite a fistful of asparagus and had ended up deep in the woods, way down near the creek. Suddenly, I heard a racket coming from above: dead wood cracking, branches breaking, dead leaves rustling - and then a forlorn "baaaaaaaaaa". Lonely Sofie was hurtling down after me!
Our farm neighbors still talk about the day Anna l'americana took her sheep wild-asparagus hunting....
(Please click here for some asparagus recipes.)
Other Memoirs of Rural Life articles.