February 26, 2007--Monday On Mallorca: In Search of the Wild Asparagus

To tell you the truth, I always thought Ewell Gibbons was a pain. I grew up watching him on the Merv Griffen Show promoting his books, chief among them, as I recall, Stalking the Wild Asparagus.

I hated the idea that to be healthy and to assure a long life you needed to search for and eat things such as Wild This and Wild That. What’s so wrong with the asparagus in the market? Don’t they too have a diuretic effect (assuming that’s a good thing) and protect the liver the way old Ewell claimed the wild kind did?

So, ashamed as I am to admit this, I was sort of happy when he died prematurely. It gave the lie to the claim that eating nuts and berries and wild things guaranteed anything except that you’d always feel hungry.

His early death took the pressure off me. I no longer felt I had to do everything responsibly and perfectly.

That is, until last Friday when Rona and I found ourselves on that same cami I wrote about last week searching for, yes, wild asparagus.

The origins of this quest actually started a couple of years ago while on a drive back to our town from Valldemossa via a torturous road through the mountains when along the margin of that twisting road, just as we approached Andratx, we spotted an ancient woman, bent and hobbling, who was clutching to her a straw basket of what looked like string beans or leeks.

Later, over coffee, a Mallorquin friend told us that it was likely wild asparagus that she was carrying so protectively. That they grow along stone-bordered roads and paths at this time of year, mid-February, and that the old folks had their favorite spots where to look for and gather them.

The following year at about the same time I read a piece in the local paper by Peter Kerr who moved to a rural finca from Scotland to live on and work the land and write about the complicated experience of trying to eek out a simple life among people who were not always welcoming. In his article he wrote about coming upon some field workers who, during their midday break, had gathered wild asparagus and over an open fire in a wooded glade were sautéing them, using local olive oil and then ate them sprinkled with sea salt that they had also harvested. When I mentioned this to the same Mallorquin friend he told me that to do this was a special treat, something men who worked the woods and fields looked forward to each February.

Then just this past week, suspecting we might find some wild asparagus for sale in the Wednesday market in Andratx, we got up early so as to try to get there before the local señoras arrived to buy up the very few that were likely to be available. And we did find some. Securing a handful we also bought some still warm-from-the-farm eggs and raced home to try to replicate what we now knew the workers in the woods would be doing later the same day.

Using Balearic olive oil, some locally churned butter, and of course sea salt from Mallorca (some salt connoisseurs—and there are some—feel the salt gathered here is the world’s finest) I whipped up a homemade batch of revueltos espárragos. And it was, ask Rona, incandescent.

So as of last Wednesday, we’re as obsessed with wild asparagus as was Ewell.

Since then we have been wandering the sun-drenched pathways and camis stalking them. Admittedly feeling a little guilty that we might be intruding on the favorite spots of those bent women. But an obsession is an obsession. So señoras, stand aside!

The only problem—we hadn’t been able to find any in spite of hours of aimless wandering.

We of course knew what the asparagus itself looked like but not the plants from which they were the stalky flowers. Scholar that I am, I suggested that we go to bookstore, get a Mallorca flora and fauna guide, and look up asparagus officinalis. Then we would know exactly the kinds of places to haunt—in locations that get the morning sun, among rock outcroppings sheltered from the wind, in the shade of larger bushes: the very sorts of thing one would likely find in Gibbons’ Stalking.

The more intuitive and romantic Rona disparaged that idea and said let’s just walk about and see what we discover. And so we did. Up and down familiar and new camis, along the paths through almond fields, across a few sheep folds; but search as we did, there were none to be found. Though the nut trees were in full blossom, the air was thus scented, and we did make friends with a magnificent sheep, we came away inspired by the hundreds of natural flowers that spring up in profusion and thereby declare full spring and the exertion did instill quite an appetite and thirst which we quickly satisfied at a café by the sea where the sardinas were fresh and sweet and the vino de la casa ripe and cheap. And of course an afternoon nap. But still no wild asparagus. Then there would always be tomorrow.

Tomorrow again dawned beautifully, rosy licks of sky above the mountains ranging right outside our bedroom door, and so we hustled off for a quick cortado before returning to our search. This time we tried a different tack—Rona is a knowledgeable gardener and though she was not ready for the flora and fauna book she said that overnight she realized we should be looking for plants that looked like asparagus fern. Not that these wispy plants with their tender, feathery mini-fronds were the source of edible asparagus, why would they be called, in their common name, asparagus ferns if they didn’t resemble actual asparagus plants? So, she said, as we work the camis we should be looking for plants that look similar to these decorative ferns. I felt for sure that if this didn’t work, by the next day, Rona would come around to my way of thing and would be running to the bookstore. Since by then she, in truth, was as obsessed as I.

We did find in the fields we traversed that day many plants that had these fern-like characteristics but none showed evidence that asparagus were any time soon about to shoot out from their core. On our hands and knees, trying to avoid the droppings of our sheep friend—we that day actually got to know a few more and a pair of goats—we probed those plants that looked in any way similar to the asparagus ferns that tantalizingly line the stairs down to our flat, and thought we saw in most of them that something had been cut from the center where the furry faux-fronds emerged.

Aha, we said, these plants in fact must be what we are seeking—it is just that we arrived too late. Those señoras we beat out in the market the other day got up earlier than we today and got to all of the ripe asparagus while we were still dawdling over our coffee. There is always tomorrow and . . .

So another magnificent morning arrived, and we were so certain that it was all about timing that we skipped breakfast, feeling our coffee would be all the better with a handful of wild asparagus in our basket.

Back to the fields we went; and while walking there I said to Rona, “Look, I’m not proud of what I’m about to say, but what do you think about this—rather than spending another morning crawling around in sheep poop, why don’t we just pretend we’re out for a stroll and when we spot one of the women with an asparagus basket we sort of hang back and watch where she goes? Then we’ll know where to look.” Rona was glaring at me by then, but nonetheless I pressed on, “I know what you’re thinking,” she nodded, “but all we really want is about six spears, just enough for my egg dish. Then we’ll be going home to New York in a few days and they’ll have them all to themselves again.”

I knew I was getting nowhere. Actually I was getting myself into serious trouble when I spotted Rona on her knees, crouching at the base of the stone wall that lined the cami on which we had been walking.

“Look,” Rona said excitedly, pointing to the intersection of the wall and the cami, “here they are! Wild asparagus!”

I raced over to join her and squatted beside her in the sunlight. And yes there they were—actually two side-by-side plants covered with asparagus shoots. Some tiny, immature, still in formation, no more than half an inch long; others fully developed and ready to be plucked off and tossed into my incandescent revueltos.

Side-by-side, as if worshiping in the Church of Nature, silently we peered together at this wonder. For how many centuries had men and women here been gathering these magnificent treasures? And for how long would this continue in the face of climactic change and the quickening pace of life that drove even Mallorquins into supermarkets and fast-food restaurants?

Rona caught me in the midst of these ruminations to point out something else that was remarkable—the cami-road had been recently repaved and the asparagus that we were so worshipfully contemplating, and I extracting meaning from, had pushed their way literally right through two inches of asphalt to reveal themselves.

To me that felt optimistic and it put a stop to my pretentious speculations. It also sent us on our way.

No, we did not gather the asparagus but rather left them there for the señoras.