I’ve been in the grip of something of a turnip obsession for a while now, a fixation sparked – I can hardly believe I’m writing this – by the former agriculture secretary, Thérèse Coffey, who responded to salad shortages in our supermarkets earlier this year with the instruction that rather than pining for off-season tomatoes, we should all learn to “cherish” the turnip instead. I know: as edicts go, this was laughable, even before we learned that the UK’s biggest turnip-grower, which also happened to be in Coffey’s Suffolk constituency, had recently given up on the crop, disheartened by the refusal of supermarkets to pay more for the vegetable in the face of rising costs. But still, I must admit it worked for me. Ever since, I’ve thought about turnips more than is either natural or entirely sane.
Such an obsession obviously involves finding good new things to do with turnips, a quest that has sent me back to books I’ve owned seemingly forever (I heartily recommend Colin Spencer’s Vegetable Pleasures, published the year I graduated from college, which includes a dashing – and delicious – recipe for turnips with walnuts, orange and parmesan). But mostly it has had me worrying away at the baffling question of demand. Even as supermarkets report an uplift in sales of less expensive meats, such as ox cheek and chicken liver, the poor old turnip continues to be denied a comeback. In farmers’ markets, many greengrocers and most restaurants, it is the Wally (as in Where’s Wally?) of vegetables. Spot one if you can.
