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For quite a long time, I only ate asparagus with sauce hollandaise and young potatoes, topped with some bacon if I felt adventurous. Not because I like asparagus best that way but because I didn’t know it in any other way. So, when a short while ago, I tasted raw white asparagus for the first time I was thrilled by its fresh taste of young shoots. These days, whenever I buy asparagus, I have to force my willpower not to eat the whole bunch just like that.
Spruce tips have a lemony, slightly dry taste and go well with the crisp asparagus. You can forage the spruce tips in April and May. The younger they are, the more delicate they taste.
Alas, nothing is forever, and the season for both, asparagus and spruce tips is very short. What would be more logical than preserving both for when they won’t be available? And what better way than fermenting to keep the asparagus crisp and all the nutrients alive. The best thing is: you won’t need many ingredients for this simple recipe for fermented asparagus with spruce tips.

Fermented asparagus with spruce tips

Ingredients

Shelf life: several months

500 g white asparagus

salt

water

1 handful of spruce tips

Instructions

1. Peel the white asparagus and cut it into pieces of 4 – 5 cm (about 2 inches).

2. Mix the asparagus and the spruce tips with 30 g salt in a bowl and let it rest for 30 minutes.

3. Put the asparagus and spruce tips into glasses and fill them up with a salt solution of 3 % (30 g salt on 1 litre of water). Put a weight on top of the asparagus to keep everything well under the brine.

4. Close the lid and let the vegetables ferment at a dark and warm place for about one week.

5. When the taste is to your liking, store the asparagus in the fridge.

Both, asparagus and spruce tips are such great foods to experiment with. For example, have you tried out this recipe for tarte flambée with asparagus and walnuts? It’s delicious. Or get over here and read how you can make a very easy homemade spruce tip honey and preserve the flavour of a spring forest. I’m not done with trying out new recipes either. Stay tuned!