Leipziger Allerlei

Leipziger Allerlei belongs to Leipzig and to spring, when asparagus, young carrots, peas, kohlrabi, and cauliflower can all meet in the same pan without pretending it is winter. I cook it as a main dish with potatoes or as the quiet centre of a Sunday table, bright and pale and green, not brown gravy. The old Leipzig version had morels and crayfish tails too; the weekday version can stand without the crayfish, but it still needs care.

Everywhere else in Germany the name gets abused. In many kitchens it became mixed vegetables from the freezer, boiled together until everything tastes of nothing. Nicht aus dem Glas, and not from the packet either. In Saxony the point is the spring basket, each vegetable kept itself. Im Norden anders, im Süden anders: the north has its fish and asparagus, the south its buttery vegetable plates, but Leipzig owns this name.

The technique is simple and strict: cook the vegetables separately or in stages, because a pea and a carrot do not have the same clock. Boil them together and the asparagus collapses before the carrot is sweet, or the peas go dull before the cauliflower is tender. Then finish everything in a light butter sauce loosened with vegetable cooking liquor. Weggeworfen wird nichts, that liquor carries the flavour you just paid for.

Watch the colour. The peas should stay green, the asparagus pale gold, the carrots bright, the sauce glossy enough to coat a spoon but not bury the garden. Schön ist, was schmeckt.