Beyond the kale

The search is on for the next big thing,

VEGETABLE growers and food promoters are searching for the next kale – the next vegetable that will scale the consumption statistics and be embraced by chefs, nutritionists, recipe writers and shoppers.

In 2007 I devoted a column to kale, in which I said it mostly passed beneath the notice of recipe writers. Stephanie Alexander had only one kale recipe in the 2004 edition of The Cook’s Companion – and none on quinoa.

I was onto something. Between 2007 and 2012, farm production of kale in the US rose by 60 per cent. The American Kale Association hired a PR company to promote it even further.

Now, both kale and quinoa have more than several cookbooks devoted solely to them. And they both proved to be more than a fad.

Research for AusVeg shows Google searches kale and quinoa peaked around 2012 but have stayed high and never gone back to their low base. The researchers suggest keeping an eye on eggplant and broccoli as contenders for the next big thing.

Or perhaps it’s cauliflower – a book coming soon by Israeli food blogger Oz

Telem, Cauliflower, is devoted solely to “the white princess”.

This week I am taking a look at two vegetables I doubt will ever get their own book or PR campaign – unheroic and unhyped turnips and swedes.

These two are often confused, although the look and taste different enough. Turnips are white with a purple blush at the top and swedes are yellowish sometimes with ridged rings around the top.

It’s not just their similar shape and size that causes confusion. In Scotland the traditional dish to serve with haggis is neeps and tatties (potatoes). Neeps is taken from turn-neeps, an early form of turnip, but they actually are swedes.

In Cornwall they have always called swedes turnips, so when they specify turnips as a must for Cornish pasties, they really mean swede.

They both are regarded and treated as root vegetables, but actually are the swollen base of stems. Turnips are one of the oldest cultivated vegetables, but swedes did not become widely grown in Europe until a couple of hundred years ago. They are related to each other as members of the brassica family (which includes kale).

Neither is regarded as a summery vegetable – except the Japanese turnip hakurei, which is very a happy in a salad. And in Kew on a Plate Raymond Blanc suggests shaving some regular turnips on a mandoline, along with carrots and fennel, and putting them into a bowl of iced water. They will curl and their powerful flavours will soften a little - use to dip in mayonnaise or yoghurt.

Pickled turnips are familiar in the Middle East (where they are bright pink with some added beetroot) in Korea and Japan.

Blanc also has a recipe turnips and swede cured with juniper berries, cloves, vinegar and gin, which he serves with beef sort ribs.

But Nigel Slater in Tender I says swedes are “a vegetable for when there is a fire in the grate and frost flowers the window”.

Swedes sponges up good flavours and “provide a firm footing for a stew”. Either turnips or swedes are at home in old classics such as scotch broth.

Larger turnips and swedes suit slowcooked wintery dishes but smaller swedes and turnips are more versatile – if you can get them.

When British cookery writer Anne Willan bought a French chateau, only the gardener was allowed to pick produce, and baby leeks or carrots were not on the menu. “Anything edible must be left to grow as large as possible” she wrote in A Kitchen in Burgundy.

My father also belonged to this school, and hence I was not fond of turnips as a child, when all our vegies came from Dad’s garden.

Now, I can buy tiny turnips at markets and explore ways with them other than stew. Nigel Slater says sugar is just as valid a seasoning as salt with turnips.

He likes to cook them with butter and sherry and then give them “a glossy coat of sugar, or, then mash them with cream and butter.

Turnips also have an affinity with oranges and can be glazed with orange juice and sugar.

Swedes become a brighter yellow when cooked and also star as a mash, by themselves or with carrot and potatoes.

This week I am taking a look at two vegetables I doubt will ever get their own book or PR campaign — unheroic and unhyped turnips and swedes.