Tarteletter med Rejer, Asparges og Dild

There's a moment in early May when the white asparagus arrives at the market in Copenhagen, and the whole spring kitchen reorients around it. The spears are pale and heavy, almost ivory, bundled with their tips upright like candles. The season is short, six weeks if you're lucky, and Danish cooks have been waiting for it since February. This is the joy of waiting, and white asparagus is one of the gifts that makes the wait worth it.

Tarteletter are the dish that holds the season. Crisp puff pastry shells, traditionally filled with chicken and asparagus in a cream sauce, served at confirmations and Easter lunches and any spring gathering that wants to feel like an occasion. The version I'm giving you here uses fjord shrimp, the small, sweet, cold-water rejer that come from the Limfjord and the inland waters of Jutland, in place of chicken. It's the coastal cousin of the classic, and in a country surrounded by water, it has just as much claim to the table.

Two things matter most. First, peel the asparagus properly and save the peelings for the cooking water, because that water becomes the sauce, and the sauce is the dish. Second, the shrimp go in at the very end and are warmed, not cooked. Fjord shrimp arrive already cooked, and any heat beyond a gentle warming turns them tough. Watch for these two things and the rest will follow. And one honest note: nobody in Denmark makes their own tartelet shells. Even the grandmothers buy them. Don't feel any guilt about this. It is the tradition.