Rites of spring

It has been a rite of spring for some years: the moment when the grapevine relates the news that – whisper it with reverence – the first Jersey Royals and the first English asparagus of the season are available.

The pilgrimage is then undertaken to Borough Market, which is guaranteed to be the first place where I’ll be able to find these reminders of the joys of seasonality.

Admittedly they won’t be cheap, these first specimens, but they go beyond simply being food and into something special: they are the first concrete statement that spring is with us and there is no turning back.

Last year, that pilgrimage came at the very end of March.

In 2011, it was in mid April. The year before? Within a few days of that. In 2009 – 10 April.

Last weekend – in the very dying embers of April – some asparagus was available on Broadway Market, but it was poor.

So when The Other Half took the day off yesterday, since he was contemplating a braai for this weekend, I gently hinted that he should make the journey to London Bridge, where he could obtain boerewors from the South African speciality shop underneath the station – and then head into Borough Market itself to track down these seasonal joys in these unseasonal days.

That’s more than a month later than the earliest occasion in the last five years, and a good three weeks later than the latest. Which tells you a great deal about just how bad this spring has been – or perhaps more accurately, how long winter was.

Last night’s meal, of simply grilled lamb chops, with homemade mint sauce (a bundle of mint, leaves picked and blitzed briefly, with a pinch of salt, a good pinch of sugar and red wine vinegar to bring together), boiled Jerseys, and fine beans with English asparagus, butter and good salt, was more of a real celebration than anything that Easter could offer.

It had, instead, real, serious pleasure in the seasonal meaning that came with it: tastes and textures and colours that are utterly those of the spring.

This early in the season, you pay a premium, but by Odin, it’s worth it.

Today, on Broadway Market, the asparagus was much improved and Mark had organic Jerseys. The young lad serving me took my rather full bag and pointed out, slightly nervously, that it was not cheap.

Oh, I knew that. But sometimes you just have to do such things – and my soul has been crying out for this for weeks.

This is my rite of spring, no less. And such things have importance.

Not that it’s the only rite of spring I’ve been paying attention to recently.

For the last week I’ve been doing a job that requires concentration and patience, yet does not occupy the mind fully.

There are times when sticking headphones on and listening to music aids concentration anyway, but with this, it’s done that – and yet there has still been enough brain space left over to actually appreciate the music.

Since I’ve also been reading Bryan Magee’s excellent short book, Aspects of Wagner, old Dickie has featured rather heavily: various bits and orchestral pieces, a disc of tenor Jonas Kaufmann singing various arias – and the whole of Das Rheingold (Solti and the Vienna Phil).

But this also made me want to go back and revisit other composers – first, Berlioz, because I recalled a similar gut reaction to part of his Symphone Fantastique as I get with Wagner; and second, Stravinsky, because I wanted to see whether The Rite of Spring in particular produced a similar, primal response.

Well, I was essentially correct in what I remembered of the Berlioz (who was obviously influenced by Wagner). At least it was the certainly the case in the fifth and final movement, Dreams of a Witches' Sabbath.

In the case of Stravinsky, Magee says that he was one of the very few post-Wagner composers who was not influenced by him (although he notes that Stravinsky’s teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, had a picture of Wagner in his study).

But if one key aspect of Wagner’s music – and one of the things that disquiets some people – is that it gets you in the gut, as well as being cerebral, then the same can most certainly be argued of Stravinsky’s ballet.

A century old this year, its Paris premiere caused a riot. We Brits, of course, merely got a bit noisy, but it still upset the first London audience a few weeks later.

Now it’s entirely feasible that the prime cause of outrage was the choreography of Ballets Russe director, Sergei Diaghilev.

It is an idea of spring that is far from a European pastoral one: indeed, its subtitle, Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts, leaves no doubt that this is far from any Christianised vision.

Let’s face it – a young woman is chosen as a sacrifice and dances herself to death.

But the score itself must have been equally as startling for the first audiences – and even today it has a power that goes beyond concert hall politeness. It too aims for the gut; for the primal, for instinct within us.

In that sense, Stravinsky was following in Wagner’s footsteps, taking music yet further away from the church and from established religious conventions – and shocking audiences in the process.

I’ve been listening to two versions, trying to compare and hear the differences: first up is Kent Nagano and the London Symphony Orchestra, and then Simon Rattle’s centenary recording with the Berlin Philharmoniker.

So much of the piece suggests the angular and sharp that it’s easy to forget that there are passages of lushness that suggest a debt to Debussy, even though this is a long step beyond the sensuality of the French composer's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune.

I can hear differences between the two recordings, right from the greater vibrato on the opening bassoon passage in the Rattle. And there are other moments where this new version seems to have layers to the sound.

It’s a good listening exercise.

And after that, it’s back to my own little culinary rite – which is probably every bit as pagan in its adoration of seasonality: more Jersey Royals, scraped gently to leave them in all their ivory glory.

Tonight, they accompanied some fillets of brill, which had been dredged in plain flour and paprika, before being pan fried in butter.

Keep them warm and deglaze with sherry vinegar or dry sherry, before adding orange juice and boiling quickly to reduce.

Serve with chopped chives and, optionally, toasted slivered almonds.

You can easily do much the same with any whole fish, including cod or pollock, simply adjusting the cooking time.

These are the tastes we’ve been hankering for for what feels like an eternity.

And on a day that has encompassed sun, wind, rain and even hail – as though this were March and April rammed into a single 24-hour timeframe – they are tastes that remind you that spring really has arrived and that there is no turning back.

Congratulations and Jubileeations

Whatever one might think of the institution of monarchy generally or in the UK specifically, avoiding the splurge of Diamond Jubilee events is next to impossible.

There is something altogether surreal about watching an elderly woman who always seems mild enough and who has few meaningful powers (although let’s not forget the Privy Council) being fawned on by people.

Large sections of the media in particular seem to be having a pre-Olympic competition in sycophancy and hyperbole.

Perhaps we need a figurehead. Perhaps not. Perhaps a monarch is better than a president. Perhaps not.

But whichever side of that little debate you come down on, it’s a tad disingenuous to go on at length about her longevity when, unlike the overwhelming majority of her subjects, she has all the benefits of just about the best of everything – including health care – and certainly doesn’t have to get up in the morning worrying about what to get the children for tea – or whether she can afford to pay the gas that will allow her to cook it.

And indeed, to pick up a popular theme amongst some, her model of family life, which on the surface is the oft-spouted ideal, does not seem to have produced great success in terms of her children’s own relationship histories.

Although of course, living in a goldfish bowl doesn’t help. But if that’s the case, then why do we pretty much expect the monarchy to display itself to us – and condemn other celebrities if they do something similar?

The House of Windsor is largely another form of mass entertainment. It’s just one that we all pay for.

So, to jubilate or not to jubilate? That is the question.

Well, since it is probably nobler to join in than to sit churlishly on the sidelines, when the subject of a BBQ was raised among some of our neighbours, I was more than happy.

Indeed, while it’s a pity that it seems to take something like this to get communities mixing, it’s one of the ideas behind today’s Jubilee Lunch.

Our neighbours, though, don’t generally need quite as much encouragement to mingle. For around nearly half the residents of our block, the sun is all that’s required.

The gate that is now in action in our garden, allowing us easy access to the carpark, makes it easier for us to join in too.

On Friday, I nipped down to Borough – first to Savannah, a shop specialising in South African produce that sits under London Bridge station.

There I picked up two packs of boerewors, a six-pack of Castle for The Other Half to imbibe while doing his Man Cooking, and a small bag of biltong to make sure the cats had some sort of treat for the weekend too.

At the market, I found more beers – blonde and dark Brugse Zot from Brugge, plus a US craft beer, Blue Moon, which I decided to pick up for as naff a reason as that being the Manchester City fans’ theme song. I have to say, it's very nice.

I had bottles of magnificent Bavarian white beer Franziskaner due to arrive in an order the following day, together with the necessary ingredients for trifle.

The plan was to have our little party on Sunday, but by Friday evening, the weather forecast was very poor, with Saturday looking like much the best option.

It meant a few changes – the trifle was put on hold – but nothing we couldn’t cope with.

In the late morning, The Other Half made dough for roosterkoek – a South African bread that you cook on the griddle of the braai (BBQ) – while I scraped close to nearly one and a half kilos of Jersey Royals and then cooked them until just ready.

With all this in mind, last weekend, I’d cooked chicken in a pot with water, the giblets, range juice and rind, black pepper, bay and lashings of tarragon, then frozen the stock.

Now, this was brought back to a simmer and then poured over the just-cooked spuds. After a couple of hours, the potatoes had absorbed much of the liquid, taking on the flavours. All that remained was to take a few chives from the garden and snip them over the top.

I’ve bnot actually done much in the way of entertaining, so the amount had been a guess. But it worked well – and I’m delighted that the potato salad was very popular.

So too were The Other Half’s bread and the boerewors that he cooked on our small BBQ, which we wheeled through the gate to join the bigger party.

Two neighbours had put bunting up and, as we sat around, feeling chilled and under a grey sky, it was hard to imagine anything much more British.

But the sun suddenly pushed its way through the cloud, the day suddenly bright and hot.

Later, there were enough ripe strawberries to hand round a small bowl, ensuring everyone had the chance to try at least one.

The stunned expressions and comments as people realised the difference of what they were tasting was perhaps particularly gratifying – simply because it reassures me that I’m not deluding myself about the difference in taste.

Looking back, I don’t think that, even as the bunting fluttered in the breeze, anyone mentioned or gave a thought to the anniversary that it was all supposed to be about.

Beer was quaffed, music played, banter enjoyed – and every one of our small community, from one to 50-odd, seemed to be relaxed and thoroughly at ease.

And if that's not worth a spot of jubilating, then what is?

Bring on the asparagus

Sat on a wall at Borough Market, late this morning, quaffing fruit juice and with the sort of feeling that you imagine is reserved for children on Christmas morning, it dawned on me that this was the sort of moment that renders the idea of ‘seasonality’ as a mere affectation utterly groundless.

In the shopping bag next to me were a small bag of Jersey Royals and two bundles of English asparagus.

I’d felt the same utter delight last year after a fruitful search for the same items. I knew, then and there, how they would be cooked. I knew too, how much they would be enjoyed. And on both occasions, they came with a joyful sense that the long, dark winter was truly behind us

And so much of that pleasure comes from the wait; the long months without such culinary jewels.

Setting aside any ethical issues (and there are a few) of buying imported asparagus, if you ate it throughout the year, why would you feel any such pleasure at the start of the English season?

Surely the only coherent reason would be that you knew that asparagus grown here has less distance to travel and is fresher. And, therefore, tastes a deal better.

In which case, why bother eating the imported product for the rest of the year?

Seasonality gives us these real pleasures. It gives us a sense of time and place. It helps to give us a sense of rootedness; of belonging.

Asparagus – or to give it it’s proper name asparagus officinals – is a cousin of the alliums, onions and garlic, and has been used as a medicine and vegetable for thousands of years: it features on an Egyptian frieze dating back to 3,000BC.

Indeed, there’s a recipe for cooking it in the oldest surviving recipe book, De re coquinaria, Book III, written by Apicius in the third century AD.

But the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans not only ate it fresh when in season, they also dried asparagus for use in winter.

In many places, white asparagus is more popular then the green that we’re familiar with. In Germany, spargel is a delicacy that is celebrated with relish throughout the short season: restaurants add special extra menus to make the most of it.

My menu for this evening was as simple as possible. I may get experimental as the season develops, but at this stage, I want my asparagus to be pretty much neat.

So, the potatoes were scraped and then boiled whole.

Some farmed salmon fillet was placed in a small sauté pan with a little Vermouth and a couple of bay leaves, lidded and left on a low heat for around 10 minutes. And those glorious green spears were carefully snapped and then laid into a pan with boiled water for four minutes.

Actually, they could have done with a minute less. Every year, it’s as though I have to learn again exactly how little cooking asparagus needs. But the taste was wonderful.

The only thing I added was a lemon butter: grated zest, mixed into unsalted butter, rolled in a little foil and bunged in the freezer to firm up.

Nothing else was required at all.

• You can find out more, including recipes, at British Asparagus.

Plus, grilled asparagus and hollandaise, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall asparagus recipes.