With the British asparagus season now in full swing, there's a delicious and different way to enjoy the pick of this year's crop at two restaurants in the Milton Keynes area.
From now until the end of the season in late June, The Black Horse in Woburn and The Swan at Salford will be serving Dip Your Own Asparagus - pots of hollandaise sauce, grated free-range egg and Parmesan for dipping the spears, a new twist on a classic flavour combination.
"We are always out there on a never ending quest to find the best of British produce and this is one of my favourites yet," says Frazer Sutherland (below) from Peach who run the pubs.
"Asparagus is one of our top spring ingredients and we wanted to make sure we served the best British asparagus we could find, and serve it with a twist.
"So we headed for Barfoots Farm in Botley on the South Sussex Coastwhere they use a combination of traditional farming and advanced cropping techniques to produce the best asparagus we've ever tasted.
"Like us, they believe in doing things properly and don't take shortcuts which means their produce is of the highest quality. It's the reason they won British Vegetable Grower of the Year and Most Environmentally Friendly Farm in Hampshire," he says.
Barfoots Farm sits in a unique microclimate between the South Downs and the Isle of Wight, where the long, high light levels and warm soils make for perfect asparagus growing conditions. Each tender spear is picked by hand and rushed to the pubs where the chefs are serving them as Dip Your Own Asparagus as well as on the pubs' specials boards for as long as the season lasts.
Feeling peckish? To reserve your table and Dip Your Own Asparagus, contact:
The Black Horse www.blackhorsewoburn.co.uk
The Swan www.swansalford.co.uk
