Ontario Asparagus is in the shop!
Hey, did your mother serve asparagus?
Was it…
- Canned
- Boiled until barely recognizable?
- Baked into something creamy and beige?
Or was it served green, crisp, and tasting like spring?
It all depends on when you were born.
Limp Spears Made Fancy
In the 1960s and 1970s it was less about whether you tasted the asparagus than how the asparagus showed off your taste.
Imported, canned and frozen, limp asparagus was available year-round.
Julia Child transformed asparagus into asperge—delicately blanched, bathed in hollandaise, and pronounced with flair.
The green stalks were not local, and asparagus was more like the well dressed guest than the host of the party.
Mama Never Cooked (Asparagus) Like This
My mom started making asparagus in the 80’s, just as Ontario asparagus was going mainstream.
Refrigerated trucks helped move asparagus from the “special occasion” category to weeknight dinner fare.
It wasn’t Julia Child who brought asparagus into my life—it was a Jewish woman from Toronto named Susan Mendelson.
Her spiral-bound cookbook Mama Never Cooked Like This, published in 1980, lived on our kitchen counter—spattered and softened at the spine.
Mendelson sets the tone for her first cookbook with a charming apology to her mother—equal parts roast and reverence:
“First I must apologize to Mother Roz, who, in fact, makes a mean caramel fudge, can open a terrific can of corn niblets, and who convinced me at a very early age that the biggest treat in life was a TV Dinner.”
My mother, like Mendelson, is a first-generation Canadian Jew who taught herself to cook. Her own mother cooked meat and boiled vegetables into submission and called it dinner. Fresh vegetables? Never!
For moms like mine, Noreen Gilletz (Second Helpings, Please! in 1968), Lillian Kaplun (For the Love of Cooking, also in 1968) and Mendelson were the original kitchen influencers, building a culinary bridge that travelled from brisket and sweet and sour meatballs to miso salmon and, of course, asparagus.
With influences from her found-home in Vancouver, Mendelson brought local, fresh-forward food to my family’s dinner table. So much so that my mom told me that Mendelson is “Canada’s Ina Garten,” before Ina Garten had even published her first (The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook, 1999).
For Mother’s Day
In honour of my mom, and the many meals she lovingly prepared for my bothers and me, here’s Mendelson’s recipe for Asparagus in Lemon Butter.
Serve it with hollandaise on the side if you like. My mom does.
ASPARAGUS IN LEMON BUTTER
How to buy:
- They should be firm with closed or compact tips. If the tips are open or wilted, the spears are likely to be tough and fibrous.
- They should be cooked as soon as possible to make the most of the flavour and the texture.
To prepare:
- Snap spears at base. The coarse stem will snap at the point where it meets the tender spear.
- Steam the asparagus for 8–10 minutes — until just tender.
Ingredients:
- Asparagus (Steam asparagus for 8–10 minutes.)
- 4 tbsp./50 mL clarified butter (see below)
- 2 tbsp./25 mL lemon juice
- salt
- pepper (freshly ground)
Instructions:
Combine ingredients and pour over asparagus.
Clarified Butter:
1 cup/250 mL butter
- Melt butter on low heat.
- Sediment will settle to the bottom and clarified butter will rise to the top.
- Pour off the clarified butter.
- You should have approximately 3/4 cup/175 mL clarified butter.