This month on ingredient we’re focusing on parsnips: the bland looking winter root vegetable that disguises a wonderful sweet, earthy flavour.

You can already find the recipe for both my Sri Lankan-inspired Curried Parsnip Soup and the Sri Lankan Roasted Curry Powder I use to make it here, and the recipe for my Parsnip Gnocchi with Pancetta & Crispy Sage here. Do upgrade your subscription to unlock every recipe in the ingredient archive as well as my full Kitchen Cupboards interviews (I confirmed the next one last week and I’m super excited to visit this fantastic and prolific food writer in her beautiful kitchen!), and of course to help fund the free part of what I post here! No creative likes asking for money, but without it ingredient can’t function.

And so we come to the end of parsnip month. I’ve particularly enjoyed exploring this unassuming winter root vegetable with you all, covering everything from soups to gnocchi, creamy parsnip mash, and reader-lead sweet parsnip bakes. And I’ve still got so many parsnip-led recipes I want to try before winter is done: only last Friday did fellow Substacker

But, nowhere in our parsnip journey together have we considered that you could eat a parsnip raw. We always started our parsnip-based discussions with how we were going to prepare it for cooking: if I’d mentioned a parsnip salad to you before today, I assume you’d think like I used to, that you’d want to roast them first in something sweet and possibly spicy before tumbling them with their salad fellows in a zingy dressing.

Parsnip Gnocchi with Pancetta & Crispy Sage.

Carrots.

·

October 17, 2023

Remoulades - a simple salad of raw shredded vegetables in a creamy mustard dressing - have always been the exception to the ‘you must cook all root vegetables that are not carrots’ rule. Not to be confused with the Creole spiced sauce with the same roots, the classical French preparation of céleri remoulade tosses shredded celeriac with the simpler mayonnaise based sauce popular as a sandwich condiment across the colder parts of Europe. Celeriac - or celery root depending where you live - is the vegetable you’ll most likely find given this preparation, but both raw and cooked parsnips do have similar properties such as, it turns out, making a great remoulade.

I’ve kept the mayonnaise base flavoured with two types of mustard, and lightened it with creme fraiche. A couple of remoulade sauce’s herbs make an appearance too in the form of tarragon and parsley, and a pleasant acidity and an extra layer of crunch is added tossing a grated apple in with the parsnip. Apple and mustard make it the perfect partner to grilled pork or, even better a deeply savoury grilled gammon steak or a few slices of ultra-thick cut bacon, but it also goes rather well with smoked fish, either as I’ve presented it below or with a little prepared horseradish sauce stirred in to enhance the pairing.

Tarragon.

·

February 9, 2023

Share

Serves: 4-6, Preparation time: 15 minutes

Whilst a celeriac remoulade is often made by fashioning long, thin crunchy batons, the texture of raw parsnip is better suited to a box grater - make sure yours is very sharp - or else do the shredding using the relevant attachments that came with your food processor.

Also: don’t be tempted to use either light mayonnaise or creme fraiche in this recipe, as you need their fatty richness to make the salad really work.

ncG1vNJzZmihnpy%2FprDInqWtmqmnrqS0xKWnoaGgpcBvv9Sbqq2Zk6B7pLvMaKdosZWoerq71GaamqZdmq61ec%2BaqaymmaXAbr7AsGSaZaKasKq8xA%3D%3D