Explainer: The rise of the humble turnip

This week might be the first time the turnip made the headlines. The root vegetable was something to be “cherished”, according to environment secretary Therese Coffey, amid the current vegetable shortages. “A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce and tomatoes and similar”, she said.

Predictably, Coffey got accused of a “let them eat turnips” attitude, much like Marie Antoinette once supposedly said “let them eat cake” when the French population was faced with a bread shortage.

There are obvious benefits to eating local, seasonal foods – both in terms of health and sustainability. Yet the current shortages point to the weaknesses in Britain’s food chains. Tomatoes and cucumbers are in short supply mainly because of extreme temperatures in Spain and north Africa. But lettuce, peppers and cauliflower have also been rationed by Britain’s biggest supermarkets. Though Brexit is not the main culprit here, it surely didn’t help.

So one would expect a bit more depth and solutions-based statements from the environment secretary – although all is surely not the fault of the humble turnip. Much less sexy than a perfectly rounded tomato, the turnip is one of those vegetables often relegated to the “boring” category by foodies. Yet even before Coffey made it, briefly, a national sensation, it was slowly but surely making its way back to restaurant menus.

London has seen the resurgence of the “modern British” cuisine in recent years. Think of restaurants like Leroy and Brawn opening their doors in north-east London, or of the father of them all, St.John. The idea is to convince people that British food, after all, not only exists – but can also be nice. All of a sudden it is cool to be eating pigeon. The turnip, together with its friend the parsnip – who you might have encountered in your Sunday roast at the pub – is the ideal sidekick to the main dish in these restaurants.

So let’s give the humble turnip a chance – maybe it actually tastes nice. In the meantime, the environment secretary might want to go and check whether her friends at the National Farmers’ Union are still offended by her claim that “we can’t control the weather in Spain” – aka food shortages are not really my problem.