Why wonky vegetables are a matter of good taste
An astonishing 50 million tonnes of fruit and vegetables across Europe never reach the supermarket shelves each year because of their appearance or size, according to some recent research by Edinburgh University.
We’ve read before about cucumbers not being straight enough and bananas being the wrong shape to meet some strict EU regulations but apparently customers themselves have fixed expectations of how their fresh produce should look.
I’d like to show them some produce from my allotment. Wonky fruit and vegetables are very much the norm! Forked carrots and parsnips may be the butt of jokes but they are quite usable in the kitchen. Slug and caterpillar damage on the outer leaves of my cabbages and kale and bent, misshapen beans are commonplace.
Only a few weeks ago, I failed to find four matching runner beans for our local show out of the kilo I had picked. As I went to stage some other more successful exhibits I encountered George Anderson from TV’S Beechgrove Garden and even he had been struggling to do the same.
I’ve often stared in wonder at the stunning exhibits provided by branches of the National Vegetable Society at various shows. Their members excel at growing monster leeks and metre-long root vegetables. Listening to any of these exhibitors talking, I realise that their attention to detail over a long growing season goes way beyond what I could cope with. However, their quest
I couldn’t find four matching runner beans out of a whole kilo
for perfection was born of a desire to grow vegetables which not only tasted good but were easy to prepare in the kitchen and that has to be a desirable attribute.
Some vegetables are inherently awkward to prepare, as anyone who’s struggled with all the knobbly bits on a celeriac root or Jerusalem artichoke will know. I’ve made a note not to grow Anya potatoes next year. They’ve cropped well but the tubers are covered with small crevices and it takes too long to make sure that the earth has been washed out of them. Pink Fir Apple potatoes may come in remarkable shapes but they do scrub up very easily. We eat them boiled with their skins on.
Finally, those of us who grow enough fruit and vegetables to store some through the winter are looking for blemish-free specimens. It’s best to eat the less than perfect produce straight away. Some can be frozen or turned into soup. n