The Importance of Eating Turnips

As far as I'm concerned the turnip (I resisted the cliche 'humble turnip' though it wasn't easy) is the Erik Satie of the vegetable world; looked down on by lovers of vegetables regarded as more accomplished, aparagus perhaps the Debussy of the greengrocer's shop, but offering lots of surprises and an ever-present strength.

A couple of varieties will feature in this evening's root salad, just peeled, cut into matchsticks, and teamed up with carrot, kohl rabi, celeriac (perhaps it's going too far to call celeriac the JC Bach of the plate, wrongly overlooked in favour of its more famous relative) and beetroot, only the celeriac needing blanching. Exceptionally virtuous certainly, but with real gourmet merits as well, the turnip will stand out in this company. It makes a fine soup too, Creme a la Vierge; takes some beating in the form of glazed baby versions as a Spring accompaniment to lamb; and with only a couple cooked with the spuds for a mash lifts it in the flavour stakes. 

With our supermarkets never out of flashier veg imported from the rings of Saturn I think we need to make an effort to get back to our roots, as it were, and make the most of the turnip and others of its ilk, including the carrot and even the much despised Swede (logical that, given the Swede is actually a turnip, though not one I'd be for eating raw). I experimented with a mash that incorporated spuds, turnip, Jerusalem artichokes and parsnip the other day, which was far more interesting than the ordinary spud-only type, and as a bonus had matured in flavour overnight when I used the few spoonfuls remaining as the basis of (I can't bring myself to use the word rissoles) 'potato cakes' mixed in with some chopped ham, cheese, and a couple of eggs. And anway, I really wanted to use that title.

It Takes Gluts

Growing a reasonable amount of our own food with less than perfect planning of same means we enjoy, the right word, the occasional glut. I've written here before about trying to make good use of courgettes, the allotmenteer's most frequent flood crop. Currently it is artichokes.

On a general level life can't be bad when one of your few worries is dealing with a load of artichokes. They have been both early and numerous this year thanks to the mild winter and spring and the already decent summer. The first as is usual were boiled to be eaten leaf base by leaf base dipped in mustardy vinaigrette as a starter, the meaty heart gradually revealed by the strip tease. There are few things as simple and delicious.

Last night having picked and cooked a bagful of smaller ones (to keep the flush of thistly flowers going) the too fiddly leaves were discarded and just the hearts used, cut into little chunks and mixed with boiled egg, very thinly sliced onion and prawns. How much would that have cost had a 'celebrity' chef's name been attached to it in a recently re-designed eaterie?

It takes gluts like that to give me the freedom to do a bit of experimenting. Had I shopped for the artichokes a) I would have just bought three; b) the cost would have pushed me to play it safe.

Sadly we don't grow our own asparagus - we tried and lacking sandy ground failed - so I will not be doing much other than steaming it, but then something so good doesn't need mucking about. Same goes for the bucketfuls of new spuds currently hitting the kitchen, though some cold leftovers made it into a pickled herring salad yesterday. You can tell how many we have currently by the fact that there actually are leftovers.

Freshness is one of the benefits of GYO - our eggs are rarely more than a day or two old for example, a world of difference to shop bought; lettuces are crisper and tastier eaten within minutes of cutting; stawberries can't be beaten snaffled straight from plant to mouth (checking for slug-basts on the way). But the king of the fresh-is-best world is the new spud. Jersey Royals in the supermarket - they beat us by weeks - are bought in expectation and eaten in resignation. Our own dug, wiped, boiled and scoffed in short order are softer, the texture almost gelatinous for some varieties. And they have so much flavour that the merest wipe of butter and a few grains of salt are called for. Still, having had our fill several times over by now I'm looking to do some other dishes for variation. I have in mind to do something spicy to enhance the flavour without masking it. All ideas gratefully received.

What Tastes Good?

Eating the last of the British asparagus I'll get to taste this year made me think about cultural taste differences, as the French, Spanish and Germans all go for the flabbier white asparagus, that has to my palate an insipid taste nothing like the green stuff. There are innumerable other such differences of national opinion: the various rotten fish dishes that Iceland and Scandinavia offer are at the extreme end of the scale - as far as this Brit is concerned anyway; but then I never liked the bitter gourds that I tried in the Far East either; or the nasty Japanese sweets made with bean paste.

That is not to say that they aren't good, just that I for reasons of custom, upbringing, and experience found those gourds and bean sweets unpalatable. 

Our national tastes do change over time, however. Witness the shift from bitter to lager. Witness more pertinently as regards food at least the shift from salads where the only ingredients were lettuce, mustard and cress and cucumber, to the many bitter leaves you'll find in your supermarket pack today - endive, radicchio etc. Doubtless foreign travel has been one driving force; commerce another - add a bit of chicory to a salad bag and increase the price by 20p; simply being able to try these things is another factor. 

Which makes me wonder what we will have in store, as it were, to taste in future. There are many vegetables and fruits never seen here: young coconut I've never seen in Britain; Durian (thank goodness, musky flavour but it smells of sewage); Kalamansi, lovely little limes with a bit of sweetness to them; so many varieties of banana. 

Sadly as we add these exotics, and we doubtless will, we are losing much of our native produce. I'm working on a piece for Cheshire Life about local apples, and find there are at least 33 still around, though many lost already. Will I ever try a Withington Welter? Or a Millicent Barnes? In an ideal world we'd keep those and add the others. Variety is the spice etc. Happily some bodies are fighting to keep the old varieties, and more power to them. When we get to plant an orchard, as we one day hope to, it is the obscure ones - though those with reputedly good flavour - that we'll go for. Even there we have differences between nations, the Japanese fruit I've tasted so bland as to leave no taste memory at all - Golden Delicious (which the French actually like) a feast of flavour by comparison. 

One Flame Spanish Dish

Though food in France and Indonesia have special places in my heart, of all the countries where I have travelled Spain is probably in culinary terms my favourite. A meal that consisted of a whole leg of lamb to myself, with a tiny salad and a few chips, served in a sign-less restaurant near Badalona; about half a pound of jamon de serrano on a warmed plate in Vitoria-Gasteiz;  percebes eaten very messily in a restaurant looking down on pre-Guggenheim Bilbao; suckling pig in Barcelona; innumerable tapas.

One dish that I came across several times in different regions of Spain, and that I have made for myself since, is perfect one flame cooking. I don't know what it should be called, memory failing me for that detail. Let's say spicy Spanish beans.

The ideal is to cook this in a flattish and flame-proof terracotta dish, and to serve it in the same. But as my flame-proof terracotta dishes never actually are, and last just months, a good deep frying pan serves. Chop a large onion into small pieces and fry it gently in olive oil until it starts to colour, then add plenty of thickish slices of chorizo (and again, anyone pronouncing that chor-itso should be ashamed) cut from a stick rather than wafer-thin jobbies from a packet, and allow them to char a little here and there. Add a drained tin of beans - butter, flageolet, borlotti or haricot, it doesn't really matter, a tin of chopped tomatoes, and cook until heated through, the tomato starting to bubble and reduce a little. Add a good teaspoon of smoked paprika, four cloves of garlic crushed brutally beneath the flat of a broad-bladed knife, and cook for five minutes longer. Check for seasoning and sweetness - if it isn't sweet to the tongue add a few splodges of ketchup or failing that a bit of white sugar. There should be paprika heat in it too, and it would not be wrong to add a chopped chili seeds and all when you have started to char the chorizo, if you have a nice chilli to hand and like a bit of fire in your belly.

This is pleasant enough as it is, but to make a full meal of the thing add halved hard-boiled eggs yolk-side up,  and/or a drained jar of white asparagus spears. Yes, a jar, they were always preserved when I had this in restaurants and hotels in Spain.

Served with the (cliche alert but it is right) best crusty bread you can lay your hands on it is a filler-upper and a treat. And it accounts for several of your five to seven a day depending on your conviction and purse.