Sparrowgrass

[coloradoclyde]

What's your favorite way to fix Sparrowgrass.... :grin:

 

[Black Hand]

If you mean asparagus - olive oil, salt and fresh-cracked black pepper then grilled briefly over high heat until tender-crisp.

 

[coloradoclyde]

Or Battersea grass..... :grin:

 

[coloradoclyde]

"In the eighteenth century sparrowgrass was so much the standard and polite term that John Walker commented in his Critical Pronouncing Dictionary in 1791: “”˜Sparrow-grass’ is so general that ”˜asparagus’ has an air of stiffness and pedantry”. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries it was also called Battersea grass, from the name of the London suburb alongside the Thames in whose market gardens it was grown."

 

[Black Hand]

Interesting information. Thanks!

 

[George]

I like it most any way, but have a couple of favorites.

When the season is right to fire up the Buck stove, I toss it with some olive oil, salt and pepper, seal it in a foil packet and bury it in the coals for 6-8 minutes, until it begins to brown/caramelize just a bit.

Usually I fix it as a Japanese dish called Asuparagasu no goma-ae, which just means asparagus with sesame dressing, The dressing is made of ground white sesame seeds, sugar and soy sauce, Bring water to a boil, drop in the cut asparagus, return to a boil and cook three minutes, douse in cold water to stop the cooking, serve with the goma-ae drizzled over. Ichiban.



Spence

 

[coloradoclyde]

What's a "buck stove"??

 

[Katahdin]

cast iron,wood burning,cook stove....

 

[BullRunBear]

I like to steam it then add the salt, pepper, and drizzle on butter and fresh lemon juice or good cider vinegar. I've been known to nibble on it cold from the ice box.

Never had it grilled but you folks make me want to try it. Plenty of room on the Lodge cast iron grill for it with corn on the cob and a couple of steaks. Ah, summer!

Jeff

 

[jackley]

Wrap it in bacon and throw it on the grill till the bacon is done.

Jerry

 

[tenngun]

Fresh, served raw and sliced in to a ceaser salad is good.
Fried in olive oil with garlic and bacon is good. Baked with butter bacon onion garlic and mushrooms in a pie is good.
Three stalks wrapped in bacon and cooked on a grill is good.
Seems I have a theme here with bacon, Canadian bacon works too :wink:

 

[Nativearizonan]

I always called it spear-grass; seems self-explanatory. They don't look like sparrows to me.

My favorite way is a dozen or more of the small diameter ones steamed and served with sour cream, salt and pepper.

They are also great in an omelet, and served several other ways as well; pickled, grilled, boiled, microwaved, sauteed, baked or fried; added to soups, stews, salads, stir-frys, pizza, hamburgers, or other sandwiches. I do like asparagus.

 

[coloradoclyde]

I always called it spear-grass; seems self-explanatory. They don't look like sparrows to me.

It was once called "sperage"

The name of this delightful vegetable has swung from classical Latin to rustic reinvention and back during its history in English.

It first appears in English around 1000. Its name was taken from medieval Latin sparagus but by the sixteenth century it had come sperach or sperage. It might well have stayed like that had it not been for herbalists, who knew the classical Latin name was asparagus, itself borrowed from the Greek. Their influence meant that that name became quite widely known during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries alongside the older names. Nicholas Culpeper, for example, headed an entry in his herbal of 1653 as “Asparagus, Sparagus, or Sperage”, thus covering all bases.

Non-scholars had trouble with asparagus and did what the medieval Latin writers had done ”” leave off the unstressed initial vowel, so making it sparagus again. But they went one step further, converting it by folk etymology into forms that seemed to make more sense, either sparagrass or sparrowgrass. The latter form became common in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries:

So home, and having brought home with me from Fenchurch Street a hundred of sparrowgrass, cost 18d.

Diary, by Samuel Pepys, 20 April 1667.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Wrap two or three spears in bacon and lay it in a glass baking dish, adding more similar bundles until the bottom of the dish is covered. Then melt a stick of butter and add two tablespoons of brown sugar and two tablespoons soy sauce and a quarter teaspoon garlic powder. Mix the butter sauce until it is like syrup and pour over the bacon wrapped asparagus. Bake at 375 for about 25 minutes.

 

[Nativearizonan]

If wikipedia is correct, it would not be period correct to call it anything, if you are in the Western Hemisphere before 1850:

Asparagus became available to the New World around 1850, in the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asparagus

 

[George]

Gottta watch the Wiki, it's not infallible.

From "A Fusilier in Revolutionary Boston", by Lt. Frederick Mackenzie, Adjutant of the Royal Welch Fusiliers:

"The morning (CAPT. EDWARD) Evans and I came on shore (in N Y, June 11, 1773) we returned to the ship with bread, butter, milk, veal, fish, peas, asparagus, Salleting, turnips, lobsters, cherries, strawberries, Pine apples, and many other things equally good and acceptable."

Spence

 

[coloradoclyde]

Commercial production began about 1850...But asparagus arrived with the first colonists....
Even Jefferson grew it on his estate.

 

[George]

A couple of recipes for the asparagus fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8R-w0uhNGU

Spence

 

[Obi-Wan Cannoli]

What's your favorite way to fix Sparrowgrass.

My favorite way to "fix" asparagus is to scrape it off my plate and into the trash can = problem solved. :barf:

 

[coloradoclyde]

Mamma say you can a no have a you cannoli if you no eat a you asparagus........ :haha: