What to do with four parsnips.

I once wrote about the supermarket cashier who brightly remarked, “Oh, a white carrot!” as she scanned my parsnip. It happened again the other day when I visited a supermarket without self-service checkouts. “Yes, they’re quite rare,” I replied. “But tasty.”

In fact I prefer the earthiness of parsnips to the jaded sweetness of the carrot. Or maybe there are just too many carrots in the world.

I baked a topped head of garlic, squeezed out the pulp, and combined it with four boiled parsnips, a tablespoon each of butter and cream, and a shake of nutmeg. Salt to taste and a quick vroom with the beater, and a slurp or two of the reserved cooking liquid, just to thin it out very slightly. Then I seared scotch fillet steaks, served them over a plinth of garlicky parsnip purée ... and rained down a mess of deep brown pepper-studded sauce over the steaks. Where the sauce met the purée was culinary cloud nine. The steak was just the meat in the sandwich.