White Asparagus: I Still Can't Cook Savory

My attempts to embrace the food culture of Belgium is happening with varying success. I'm loving all the fantastic bread and cheese that exists here, not to mention the excellent waffles and jars and jars of speculoos. However, I'm struggle-busing a bit with being unable to tell if the meat I am buying is chicken or pork or salami and "bruin" does not mean brown bread apparently. Thankfully, I have not bought milk here, which I hear from my fellow Yalies is oftentimes buttermilk or fullfat instead of our delightfully 2% in America.
One of the most confusing things foodwise I saw when I first got here (minus all the freaking processed deli meats) was white asparagus. It was everywhere at the farmers markets and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what it was. It couldn't be bamboo, I mean, bamboo in Europe? No....Turned out it was asparagus. My PI (principle investigator, aka the boss of a research lab) waxed poetically about it one day at lunch for me though and his fine cooking methods for it that involved steaming it and serving it with a butter sauce and lemon if there were any at home.

I've never cooked asparagus, not even the green variety, but I've grown pretty fond of it whilst roasted. Unlike green asparagus, white asparagus has to be peeled before cooking. The asparagus is grown underground and harvested just before it breaks the surface (it turns purple if exposed to the sun). My first attempt to cook white asparagus was pretty embarrassing, so lets just say it was like eating chewy sticks. This time, it was at least mildly edible. I tried to do a basic steamed asparagus with a brown butter vinaigrette  Needless to say, as evidence by these photos, the sauce was really not mixed all that well. I didn't have most of the things the recipe I loosely followed asked for, so I basically made what seemed like my go to olive oil, balsamic, and dijon mustard salad dressing--except with brown butter instead of olive oil. The brown butter didn't seem to add much in my opinion though. Although, as I may have already mentioned, I'm terrible at cooking real food.

I don't think I've mastered the "art" (lol) of boiling asparagus, as some of the stalks were still a little chewy. While the tops of the asparagus were deliciously soft and a delight to eat, the lower halves of the stalks were a bit more fibrous, to put it gently. Still edible, but only because I have the food standards of a dog when it comes to my own cooking.
White Asparagus with Brown Butter Vinaigrette adapted from Gastronomer's Guide.