Do you remember the nursery rhyme about wishes and horses, and turnips and watches? It goes like this: “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. / If turnips were watches, I’d wear one by my side.”
When I was a child, those verses appealed to me. I loved horses and would have liked nothing better than to wish one into existence. As for the turnip, I was learning to tell time, following the hands on a clock as they clicked off the minutes, travelling around the dial. Believing all things possessed magical qualities, if I could have just put my hands on a turnip, I was sure I could turn it into a watch.
But I never found one. In
my family, we didn’t eat turnips. I’m not sure I would have known how to
recognize one if I stumbled across it. Later in life, I saw turnips piled in
bins at the supermarket, dull, bumpy white balls, looking none too fresh. I’d
have taken a sturdy brown potato any day, especially as my mother made the best mashed potatoes around.
My prejudices against the turnip held on for much of my life and to be honest, only recently have I overcome them completely, thanks in part to covid-19 and the ensuing restrictions on daily life imposed in France.
Since last May 19th, there has been a slight letup. The French have been able to reunite with one of their most beloved institutions: the sidewalk café. After being deprived for over a year—except for a brief interval last summer and early fall, they can once more sit down at a café terrace to enjoy a drink, a meal, a chat with friends.
During the long months when cafés were closed, many café and restaurant owners proposed alternatives to sitting outside at a marbled-topped table to sip a drink and watch the world go by. Some put in place ambitious take-out menus. Others sold drinks at a makeshift counter blocking entry to the café. There was just one problem. Customers did not have the right to linger; they had to take their drink or meal and go. Otherwise, the café owner could have problems with the law.
Some opted for another solution, my personal favorite, that brings me back to the humble turnip. In my neighborhood, a couple of cafés turned their terraces into farmers markets, renting sidewalk space to what the French call “maraîchers,” what Americans call “truck farmers,” who produce fruits and vegetables to sell close to home. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the term referred to small farmers on the outskirts of Paris who raised vegetables on marshy plots near the capital (marais, the root for the word maraîcher, = marsh).
As the suburbs of Paris expanded, the vegetable farms disappeared, yet some held on till the end of the 20th century. Next to the university where I taught in the suburban town of Saint-Denis, there was a truck farm right across the street and at a local supermarket, I bought vegetables grown a few feet from where I worked. Today, that same piece of land is a metro station, a student residence, and the National Archives of France.
These past months, I became the regular customer of a maraîcher selling his produce at a café located at the foot of a public stairway, the extension of one of the most romantically named streets of Paris, Passage des Soupirs, Passage of Sighs. I stopped by at least twice a week, always eager to discover his wares. Fresh spinach or asparagus, spring onions, wild garlic, Batavia and bib lettuce, the first strawberries, apples left over from the fall, but still juicy and good. And turnips. I studied them warily. It’s the farmer—and his stand disappeared, its absence taking me by surprise, before I got to ask his name—who convinced me to give them a try.
The turnips were arranged in bunches, each topped with greens. They were not like the kind I was used to seeing at the supermarket. In shape, each one looked a bit like a flattened ball. As for color, these plump little turnips were magnificent: pearly translucent white topped with a lilac blush. Of course, I bought a bunch.
The first time, I included the turnips in a vegetable soup, adding the greens, which gave a nutty flavor. I also put in onions, carrots, celery, a fennel ball, a few leaves of spinach (I make my soups with what vegetables I have on hand). After letting the vegetables simmer, I pureed them. The final product was fresh, light, and full of springtime flavor.
Next time I visited the maraîcher, I bought another bunch and followed his instructions: eat them raw. Now, I’ve got into the habit of using them in salads. After slicing the turnips paper thin, I toss them with a simple dressing of chopped garlic, olive oil, cider vinegar, a few grinds of pepper, and some salt. Then I cover them, pop them into the fridge to marinate, and the next day they are crisp and delicious. I also add them cooked to a vegetable medley with fresh peas and carrots.
In France as in many other parts of the world, turnips get a bad rap. The ancient Romans tossed them at unpopular politicians. In Europe, for centuries, the turnip was reserved for cows, pigs, sheep, and the poorest of the poor. Only in times of famine did people from all walks of life throw one into the pot. In the 19th century world of the novels of Charles Dickens, a “turnip” was a bumbling idiot. During World War I, the Germans ate them because they had to. During World War II, it was the Brits’ turn to eat “Woolton pie,” a turnip dish named after Lord Woolton, the wartime Minister of Food, in charge of rationing. For the French, “un navet,” a turnip, is a film that is a flop.
Without the covid-19 pandemic, I might have encountered the humble turnip in happier circumstances. Yet, our meeting has certainly been happy and fruitful, and now we are together for life. Tastes change, mine have. Today, I’d take a humble turnip over a potato any time.
