As Strong As Soup

The turnip has an image problem in this country. Perhaps that's not so surprising. I can remember some pretty terrible meals accompanied by grey and unpleasant turnips in the distant past. Fast forward a few years and I was eating turnips in France and realising that they can be absolutely delicious. I've been growing an old French variety ‘Des Vertus Marteau’ for a couple of years now and the flavour and texture is probably the best I've found. Better still, they’re really easy to grow and quick to crop. So if you have a little spare ground, then I recommend trying some. Unless you live in France, you're unlikely to find the seeds of this or other similar French varieties at the local garden centre but they are quite widely available from suppliers of heritage seeds.  Chervil has a bit of an image problem in Britain too. It never seems to be as widely available as other fresh herbs in shops and supermarkets. But chervil has a lovely flavour and looks good as a garn...

The other day, for some strange reason, I thought about Nathaniel Gubbins. I'd read some of his musings many years ago but it was obviously time for a return visit. Nathaniel Gubbins was an alias of Edward Spencer who was writing about food around the end of the 19th century. After a quick search I came up with probably his best known book 'Cakes and Ale'. For this month's Random Recipe challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked us to select the first or last recipe in a randomly chosen book. It occurred to me that you can't get a much more randomly chosen book than this, so I thought I'd give it a go. 'Cakes and Ale' isn't really a recipe book - it's described by the author as a 'dissertation on banquets interspersed with various recipes'. Sure enough in chapter two I came across the first "real" recipe: 'Gubbins Sauce' This is probably one of the best-known British devilled sauces and I've seen it revived a num...