(fried three ways) Skirrets
A few weeks ago, I was pleasantly surprised to see a unique vegetable listed on Green Meadow Farm‘s farm share announcement: skirret. This European root vegetable was very popular in Renaissance cookery and is now rarely cultivated.
I’ve been eager to taste skirret since the early days of this project. I’ve read news articles about skirret – the forgotten vegetable that potatoes replaced on the European dinner table. I’ve read John Evelyn’s praise for skirret’s use in salads in Acetaria and accounts of its lust-inducing capabilities in Gerard’s Herbal. Boiled skirret was dressed with oil or melted butter, salt, and pepper and served as a salad or alongside roast or boiled meats. After boiling and peeling, it was often fried and served as a side. In seventeenth-century recipe manuscripts, it most often appears as a side or as an ingredient in pies.
Of all the pieces I’ve read about skirret over the years, Ivan Day’s recreation of a skirret pie has been most helpful to me. He explains the process of boiling and peeling the small, fiddly roots before integrating them into dishes. None of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century texts discuss this as they assume cooks already have this knowledge. Following Day’s instructions, I’ve also planted the tender new roots in my garden and I’m hopeful that it will yield a crop next spring.
