PARSNIP

After much voyaging around exotically-named varieties, our monthly tour of Fenland vegetables comes to one of the more familiar species!

Although considered a winter vegetable, parsnips are available year-round. The emphasis on winter is largely because the flavour develops best when the roots have been exposed to frezing temperatures for two to three weeks. This causes the conversion of the starch in the root into sugar, and accounts for many of the earliest uses of parsnips, for jams and the like, in a time when refined sugar wasn't readily available. Parsnip wine and beer were also popular, and the former is still available from 'country wine' suppliers today -- or of course, you could make your own!

This is a member of the carrot family, which it self-evidently resembles: in both cases, a root vegetable where we eat the root! Perhaps surprisingly, the food value of this unassuming root exceeds that of any vegetable other than the potato. It has a characteristic sweet, earthy flavour.

You can grow these yourself from seed -- conveniently, they need little attention beyond thinning out to retain the more vigorous seedlings. Sown in the early spring, they'll be ready for harvest in mid-autumn, but it is well worth waiting for that frost referred to above. The plant signals its readiness when the tops turn yellow -- but they'll not harm in the ground while you await the frost! Harvested, they'll keep for up to 10 days in a cool dry, preferably dark place.

They're versatile, in that they can be boiled, roast, baked or used raw -- smaller roots don't even need to be peeled, although you'll probably get more flavour from the larger ones if you chop or slice them. As well as using them as a vegetable in their own right, they're great in stews and casseroles -- and in soups, as in our own recipe for curried parsnip soup.

 

 

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