Confusing the Seasons

Soup in a Basket--Parnips on Outside

Last week in Indy, a whole roadside of chicory was in bloom. Lovely, but it’s usually a sign of the 4th of July around here, with the heat of August forcing it dormant. We didn’t get the heat of August–August happened in mid-June this year– and now we’ve been having November since mid-September and are now coming out of mid-December, so no wonder the poor things got confused…but that was last week. We’re finally having some seasonal weather, with highs in the 60′s. It’s always a toss up whether my kids can go trick-or-treating in just their costumes (even when my daughter went as a belly dancer) or will have to wear winter coats. Which kind of negates the point of the costume, but try telling them that. They could go in fancy footwear those years and spare us the cost of costumes.

In other seasonal news, some of you may have fall gardens or farmers’ markets still going. So you may be seeing fall root vegetables.

I’m glad to see parsnip, because they’re a little-used but traditional vegetable. At one point in time, after the birth of my first child, I developed an allergy to carrots (among other things; celery being another one). Because carrots are a basic ingredient to the flavoring mince of mirepoix (carrots, onions and celery in equal amounts), this was a bit of a disaster. Fortunately, my Michigan-gardening-belt-raised mother suggested parsnips as a replacement.

This is another one of those root vegetables many of us look askance at. The problem with root vegetables is that they grow underground, and have a tendency to be knobbly, dirty, and not too colorful (unless you count rainbow carrots, radishes and some turnips). Like those screaming mandrakes in the Harry Potter movies, they’re not attractive. Comes with sharing the underground space of worms, beetles, and trolls and ogres (just to get you in the holiday mood). They’re not pretty, like peas or peppers or striped tomatoes.

Yet, before the introduction of the potato to Europe, root vegetables, especially rutabagas, turnips and parsnips, filled the place the potato now occupies.  We had an early root vegetable exchange when Columbus took the potato back to Europe.  About 100 years later, in Virginia in 1609, early settlers brought the parsnip to the New World.   Prior to that, parsnips were a favorite ingredient in ancient Rome. Believe it or not, parsnips were heavily bred in the Middle Ages to produce tastier, sweeter, and meatier varieties. Small fortunes rose and fell on the parsnip! (And then they had to reinforce the bank’s walls so it wouldn’t happen again. But enjoyed the resulting mashed side dish.)

Parsnips develop their full flavor and sweetness if they are left in the ground until a hard frost (like some varieties of pear need to be left on the tree, the Moon River in particular). This allows for their starches to turn to sugars. Some farmers will leave them in the ground until late winter or even spring to get the sweetest ones. Commercial farmers hold them in cold storage for a couple of weeks to make them sweeter.

Like potatoes, they will brown after exposure to air when peeling, so a little lemon juice in water will keep them nice if you’re peeling them well ahead of cooking them. And like potatoes, you can use them in many ways, from steaming, sauteing, baking, mashing, roasting–and like carrots, you can shred them in a salad, stir-fry them or eat them raw in sticks. Added to stews, casseroles, tabbouleh–they add a sweet, delicate flavor all their own.

Parsnips are a higher carb vegetable.  They have 17 grams of usable carbs per cup raw, or roughly 10 1/2 grams cooked.  So fit them in where your way of eating allows: as a flavoring agent, perhaps, if you have to really restrict them.  If you can handle more, then by all means think about making them a more major part of a dish.

So if it’s warm where you are, don’t pull them yet. And don’t be afraid to try them. While their neighbors might go bump in the night, they don’t.