Buried treasure

Someone somewhere has a Basil Hallward painting of my hands in their attic in which the digits are getting younger with each day that passes while mine age in tragic contrast to my youthful visage and ruggedly handsome countenance*

I have hands like monkey’s paws.

You’d swear they belong to someone with great-great-grandchildren, to an emu, or to a man whose job it is to remove the paintwork from hot Cadillacs in Death Valley using white spirit wearing no gloves, after eating salt and vinegar crisps and squeezing the juice out of 3 dozen lemons with his bare hands on a day when an off-course Papagayo wind is blowing itself silly.

This gives me a good excuse to keep my hands out of most of the photographs I take. And it’s not so simple to take a picture and hold the harvest at the same time – I’m not a fan of most of those pics where you dig the whatever-it-is up a little and take a pic of it half in/half out of the earth.

Early last week I got the fork in the ground for a few minutes – I’m glad I did, it’s been frozen ever since. And in this season of good will, I got three presents for my trouble. All needed photographing.

So it’s handy to have the odd stunt hand double around. Now that I’m an award winning photographer you’d be almost right in imagining that people are literally unqueueing up to volunteer themselves to be hand models at Otter Farm.

Salsify – a size-zero parsnip to look at, with many stringy roots working their way out into the soil, perpendicular to the main root itself. It makes them a pain to dig up – you have to lift them carefully with a fork. It’s worth the little trouble.

They’re also known as the underground oyster which is stretching their delicate flavour rather too seaward to my taste. Having lived in Whitstable for a year or two I know an oyster, and this ain’t no oyster. Somewhere in between artichoke hearts and asparagus, and very fine they are too.

My lucky wife won the race to hold the salsify and the glimpse of stardom that comes with it. She also got to have a small slug work it’s slippery way across her hand. Don’t worry, I told her about the slug once I got the shot right.

Salsify was the first thing I grew that I’d never heard of before seeing it in a seed catalogue, and it convinced me to always grow something I hadn’t eaten every year, even within the constraints of the veg patch. This year it was oca and yacon, both beloved of the ancient people of South America.

Trent (who regular readers may remember enjoys the occasional jig around the farm) was here the following day and as he hasn’t got old hands I roped him in for the oca and yacon. There was a little added tension as I hope to include oca and yacon in the book I’m writing.

There were a few ‘ifs’ attached to this: if tubers had formed below the surface over the course of the summer, if we didn’t knacker them all trying to get them out, if they weren’t riddled with slug holes, if they tasted good, AND if I could take a reasonable shot of any we harvested. This was the only photoshoot we had as I don’t know anyone growing any, and the photos have to be delivered in February, so no time to grow any more.

You’d think it wouldn’t be too hard to take a few pictures of a man holding a tuber, but it took a good few attempts. Bless him, he’s American so we mustn’t be too hard on the poor love. A few sharp taps with a hefty stick and he was soon holding it just right.

Oca looks like a blind cobblers thumb….

….or not unlike pink fir apple potatoes if you prefer.

They taste weirdly lemony raw, the moment they’re dug up – a little like sorrel. The oxalic acid gives it the sharp edge, but this glides away over a few days in the light. They don’t turn green like potatoes, so you can let them sweeten in the sun. Very good they are too.

The yacon has been growing about 2 feet away from the oca. If the leaves were the prize I’d have been in long ago, as their tatty but rather beautiful green growth shoots up a good metre or so tall. As with oca, you have to let winter arrive before nosing under the soil for the tubers.

Fresh out of the ground they’re very much like baking potatoes to look at and water chestnuts to eat. They don’t quite collapse as such – they’ve more resistance than that – but, like a very fine sorbet, they do sort of ‘give in’. There’s a hint of flavour about them raw although not much, but the texture is incredible. Ideal in a strange Waldorf salad I should think. They’re now on the same window sill as the oca – a few more days where they should develop the flavour of pears. So they say.

Just in time for Christmas. Oysters, pears and lemon all from under the surface of the soil. Now there’s a seasonal present.

Merry Christmas x

*some, more or all of this sentence may not be true

  • How do you work out how to cook these veg? I have some salisfy but dont know how to cook them and someone said they went off quite quickly!

    Great photos of veg

  • Hello PG

    Salsify is great with cream – wash it well and strip off the larger side roots, chop the leaves off, boil for 15-20 mins then plunge the salsify into cold water. The skins should slip off. Then chop into batons and fry in a little butter until it just starts to brown – then in with a little cream – should thicken into a lovely sauce. Chopped parsley and parmesan if you fancy it. V nice, especially with lamb.

    Glad you like the photos, ta
    m

  • I'm hooked by the oca & yacon – where do you get the tubers from ?; (btw is the obvious lack of agri&horti cultural instructions a cunning ploy to persuade your punters to buy the "book"?) but salsify is too damn fiddly for little reward; maybe we weren't as successful as you at growing them and I may be wrong but if you want something which tastes like oysters why not try oysters.

  • Ha ha – no, no growing advice, it's mostly too dull but you know how it goes – if its a seed, pop it in the soil, if it's a plant dig a little hole for it and put it in the ground. It's always roughly the same, they just make it seem more tricky in the books.

    If you havent already, try the salsify with the cream – worth all the trouble in the world I think. One of the v few things I grow every year.

    I think a few nurseries do the tubers – I got some from a friend. If you have no joy searching let me know, I'll send a couple if all mine sprout

  • Poor bastard having to stand there with his hands under the cold tap while photographer tweaks f-stop and diddles with his tripod
    I have just dug a delivery van out of my drive so know how he feels.
    Are you sure you aren't just inventing vegetables and those pictures are of Play-Doh models that you have made with the sole purpose of pulling the wool over people's eyes?

  • How sad to see the sorry, twisted, emperors-new-clothes world of garden design has sullied your mind and made you such a bitter cynic. Only the last one is Play-Doh

  • I tried oca for the first time last year. Found some in Waitrose, I did. It's a very handsome tuber.
    Anyway, I prostrate myself at your tripod and camera – your pics are beauuuutiful. Did you say you were an award winning photographer?

  • Nothing GM…but everything in its right place (ie on the end of a monkey's arm)

    And yes Martyn, now you come to mention it, I do seem to recall….

  • All very gorgeously photographed, oh award-winning one, but as I'm still working up the courage to eat parsnips, oyster-tasting tap roots may be a little, um, exotic for tastebuds. Happy New Year!

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