After almost ten months of blogging I feel I need to do something new, something different to keep you, my adorable public, happy and interested.
I fear that weekly ramblings about vegetables are just not enough to keep you demanding blogophiles still clicking. So here it it, the inaugural Drooling Vegetable Competition!
I am sneakily attempting to combine this with this week’s gardening dilemma. Well, I say this week, but in truth it’s a poser that I’ve faced for longer than I care to remember: how do you make a Swede interesting?
I’m sure that on far more stimulating blogs than mine, that question should be the first half of a very dirty joke involving Scandinavians, but I’m afraid you, dear reader, will have to take it at face value. You see, each year I plant the seeds, grow the veg and then, about this time of year when there’s bugger all else growing in the garden, I start to get really, really, REALLY bored of mashed swede.
Yes, the butter livens it up, I agree, a heavy hand with the pepper can add a bit of zip, but really, there must be more to the vegetable than a saucepan of hot water and a nob of butter. Buggered if I know what, though. Try as I might I can’t find anything more inspirational to do with the things.
So, this year’s competition: send in your swede recipes and prove that the vegetable is worth it’s place in the kitchen. It’s got to be more creative than lobbing it in a stew with whatever else is still standing on the allotment or mashing it and dumping it next to the proper stuff on your plate. Put your creativity to the test! Humble me with your dazzling culinary genius! Make me eat my swede-bashing words!
Answers underneath this post please, and the winner will receive a wonderful mystery prize, delivered just in time for Christmas….
On the ipod while awaiting a tidal wave of Swede-ish recipes: Abba / Winner takes it all. Abba? Swede? Geddit?!?!?!?
December 14, 2009 at 1:35 pm
Feed to pigs. Kill pigs. Make sandwiches.
Robert Blair, in his excellent volume Nutrition and Feeding of Organic Pigs – still available as a late Christmas present, £65 well spent – posits that, “Sows appear to like swedes and when they have access to this crop spend less time rooting in paddocks”. My experience has yet to back this up – my pig husbandry so far only extends to small pieces kept in the freezer – but this chap has surely nailed the worth of this god-awful vegetable.
Please send me my prize pronto.
December 15, 2009 at 1:39 pm
I was going to suggest ‘clapshot’ – but I suspect you can’t be persweded…
December 21, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Groan…..
December 15, 2009 at 10:54 pm
Forgot to leave the tune for your ipod, when you’re bashing those neeps: Pounding ~ Doves
December 16, 2009 at 6:53 am
I have to admit I only ever use them in mash but I have listened to you and scoured the internet where the common view seems to be er mash!
Anyway after much looking (well it wasn’t the first google result) I have come across a potential – http://www.abelandcole.co.uk/recipes/swede#recipe7
December 21, 2009 at 10:34 pm
Great spot Amy, I shall definitely have a bash at the swede cakes.
A clear winner!
December 16, 2009 at 7:22 am
Oh to have swedes, home grown or otherwise. They don’t appear in the shops here (in Czech Republic), nor can I get the seeds. I should really have picked up on that point. But no – friends brought me some seeds and in they went. Early growth was promising, but they never “bulked up”. All I had was roots that were slightly fatter than when they went in. I put this down to either lack of water or the dry, sandy soil. So I will just dream of them boiled, mashed, roasted, fried, stewed, or curried instead.
Try coating them in seasoned breadcrumbs and roasting them – works well with parsnips and beetroot, although I’ve not tried it with swede (coz I don’t have any!)
December 17, 2009 at 1:19 pm
You’ll enjoy the Eurythmics song: Swede Dreams Are Made Of This, dI
But if you have parsnips how can you still hanker for swedes??? I suppose variety is the spice of life!
December 21, 2009 at 10:32 pm
Mal, you are on FIRE!
December 21, 2009 at 10:35 pm
If I were a more professional gardening blogger then I might be able to give some tips on what to do to get bigger swedes.
Unfortunately I don’t really know what I’m doing so you’ll have to console yourself with the thought that I shall think of you next time I mash my swede…