Fritaja sa šparogama

The story

In Istria, spring cooking begins when wild asparagus appears. The Istria Tourist Board says the season runs from mid-March to the end of April along the wider coastal belt, where the plant, Asparagus acutifolius, hides among thorny shrubs on stony karst ground. The spears are much thinner than cultivated asparagus and pleasantly bitter, and the plant cannot be cultivated, so every bunch is foraged. The best-known way to cook them is fritaja: the tips are softened in olive oil, then beaten eggs, salt and pepper go into the pan. In the Buzet area, restaurants taking part in the Days of Asparagus list it as fritada or kajgana, the word for scrambled eggs, which describes its soft, stirred texture. Because the season runs through Holy Week, fritaja also turns up at Easter. On Holy Saturday in 2019, the city market in Pula cooked what Dnevnik.hr called a traditional asparagus fritaja with 1,500 eggs, 20 kilograms of asparagus, five kilograms of young onion and seven liters of olive oil, stirred over low heat for at least 45 minutes and handed out as 500 portions. At home, eight eggs and a small bunch of the thinnest asparagus you can find make a starter for four.