This season we’ve grown turnips for the first time, and Madame (who doesn’t like them) brought a few of the thinnings back to the flat. They were tiny – barely 3/4″ across- and I just steamed them in the same pan as the carrots. She still didn’t like them and so I got to eat them all. They were little flavour explosions, an entirely new taste to me at least, and now I’m watching the bed they’re growing in to make sure I get some more before they turn into cattle fodder! In France where (according to Alan Davidson’s excellent Penguin Companion to Food) they take turnips more seriously, they’re called navets, not to be confused with ‘navette’ which a shuttle bus and which may cause you to be unexpectedly shown the door should you ask for it in a restaurant. So there it is – we shun the turnip on our allotment, but we do grow some rather fine navets.