You might be forgiven for thinking that asparagus is a native, like Paddington Bear, of Peru. Virtually every stick of the stuff seems to come from there, and it comes year-round.
It's a fair bet that very few people know when this noble vegetable is in season. The answer is now. For a few weeks we can enjoy Irish and English asparagus - the best in the world - either as God intended, dipped in melted butter sharpened with a little lemon juice, or decadently, with hollandaise sauce, which so many people are too scared to make.
If I can make hollandaise sauce, anyone can. You need a double saucepan or a bowl that fits fairly snugly into the top of a saucepan. You also need an egg, about 500g of butter - cut into small cubes and allowed to reach room temperature - and a few drops of lemon juice.
The trick is to apply very gentle heat to the ingredients, so let the tap run until the water is at its hottest, then put enough in your saucepan to heat the bottom of the bowl. Separate an egg and put the yolk into the bowl, stirring it occasionally until it thickens a little and, as they say in the books, "coats the back of a spoon".
Now take a deep breath and drop one of the butter cubes into the egg and whisk like mad until it disappears. Carry on doing this until all the butter has joined forces with the egg, to produce a thick but runny sauce. You may need to put the saucepan on an extremely low heat for a couple of minutes every now and then, to keep the temperature up, but I rarely find this necessary.
At the end, squeeze in enough lemon juice to sharpen the sauce. The sense of triumph in doing this for the first time is almost as good as that from growing your own asparagus. If you do want to grow your own, the best and cheapest way is from seed, which needs to be sown over the next couple of weeks. It will be three years before you can eat any, but it will taste all the better for that. Choose an all-male F1 hybrid, such as Jersey Knight or Marte. ... Tom Doorley