#Terry Pratchett

[dduane]

Of parsnips and parsnip soup

So the question of parsnips, and particularly parsnip soup, came up secondary to this quote from an interview with Terry Pratchett. (Thanks to @captainfantasticalright for the transcription.)

Terry: “You can usually bet, and I’m sure Neil Gaiman would say the same thing, that, uh, if I go into a bookstore to do a signing and someone presents me with three books, the chances are that one of them is going to be a very battered copy of Good Omens; and it will smell as if it’s been dropped in parsnip soup or something in and it’s gone fluffy and crinkly around the edges and they’ll admit that it’s the fourth copy they’ve bought”.

And when @petermorwood saw this, he immediately reblogged it and added four recipes for parsnip soup.

These kind of surprised some folks, as not everybody knew that parsnips were an actual thing: or if they were, what they looked like or were useful for.

The vegetable may well be better known on this side of the Atlantic. (And I have to confess that as a New Yorker and Manhattanite, with access to both great outdoor food markets and some of the best grocery stores in the world, I don't think that parsnips ever came up on my personal radar while I was living there.) So I thought I'd take a moment to lay out some basics for those who'd like to get to know the vegetable better.

The parsnip's Linnaean/botanical name is Pastinaca sativa, and in the culinary mode it's been around for a long time. It's native to Eurasia, and is a relative to parsley and carrots (with which it's frequently paired in the UK and Ireland). The Romans cultivated it, and it spread all over the place from there. Travelers who passed through our own neck of the woods before the introduction of the potato noted that "the Irish do feed much upon parsnips", and in the local diet it filled a lot of the niches that the potato now occupies.

You can do all kinds of things with parsnips. The Wikipedia article says, correctly, that they can be "baked, boiled, pureed, roasted, fried, grilled, or steamed". But probably the commonest food form in which parsnips turn up around here is steamed or simmered with carrots and then mashed with them: so that you can buy carrot-and-parsnip mash, ready-made, in most of our local grocery chains.

It also has to be mentioned that most Irish kids have had this stuff foisted on them at one point or another, and a lot of them hate it. (@petermorwood would be one.) I find it hard to blame anybody for this opinion, as one of the parsnip's great selling points—its spicy, almost peppery quality—gets almost completely wiped out by the carrot's more dominant flavor and sweetness.

Roasting parsnips, though, is another matter entirely. They roast really well. And parsnip soups are another story entirely, as it's possible to build a soup that will emphasize the parsnip's virtues.

So, to add to Peter's collection, here's one I made earlier—like yesterday afternoon, stopping the cooking sort of halfway and finishing it up today.

I was thinking in a vague medioregnic-food way about a soup with roasted bacon in it, but not with potatoes (as those have been disallowed from the Middle Kingdoms for reasons discussed elsewhere. Tl;dr: it's Sean Astin's fault). And finally I thought, "Okay, if we're going to roast some pork belly or back bacon, then why not save some energy and roast some parsnips too? The browned skins'll help keep them from going to mush in the soup."

So: first find your parsnips. I used four of them. You peel them with a potato peeler...

...sort of roughly quarter them, the long way...

...then chop them in half the short way, toss them in a bowl with some oil—olive oil, in this case—spread them on a baking sheet, and season them with pepper, coarse salt, and some chile flakes. (I used ancho and bird's-eye chile flakes here.)

These then went into the oven for about half an hour, and came out like this.

While that was going on, I got a block of ready-cooked Polish snack bacon out of the freezer.

On its home turf, this is the kind of thing that turns up (among other ways) sliced very thin on afternoon-snack plates, with cheeses and breads. But we like to score it and roast it to sweat some of the fat out, and then use it in soups and stews and so forth.

So I scored this chunk on most of its sides, browned it in a skillet, then shoved the skillet into the oven for twenty minutes or so. Here's the bacon after it was done.

While it was cooking, I made about a liter of soup stock from a couple of stock cubes. If you can get pork stock cubes, they'd be best for this, but beef works fine.

This then went into the pot and was brought up to just-boiling while the bacon and the parsnips were chopped into more or less bite-sized chunks. After that, the meat and veg were added to the pot and the whole business was left to simmer for a couple of hours while I went off to do some line editing.

Finally I turned it off and left it on the stove overnight (our kitchen is quite cool, it was in no bacteriological danger from being left out this way) and then finished its simmering time around lunchtime today.

And here it is. (...Or was. It was very nice.)

...Anyway, this is only one of potentially thousands of takes on parsnip soup. Recipes for more robust versions—based on mashed parsnips and more vegetables, or different meats—are all over the place.

Meanwhile, as regards how much damage this soup could do to your copy of Good Omens if you dropped yours in it, I'd rate this at about 5 damage points out of 10. ...Call it 5.5 if you factor in the chiles. Soups along the boiled-and-mashed-parsnip spectrum would probably inflict damage more in the 7.50-8.0 range. But your results may vary: so I'll leave you all to your own experimentation.

[thewolveswolf]

my xmas present from @mrghostrat arrived; a signed copy of good omens!!!!!!

one day i’ll stop yelling about it, but not anytime soon

[thisismorrigan]

I was unaware this book existed so when I picked it up I had no idea what I was getting into. As I was reading through, my eyes were getting a bit misty (I was crying who am I kidding), I got to the back cover and absolutely sobbed in the middle of my used bookstore.

@neil-gaiman I read through the letters you all wrote for this book, and it just made me wish even more that I had the chance to meet that wonderful man at least once. I knew I couldn't put it back on the shelf and walk away, so I brought it home and it sits on the shelf with the rest of my Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman book collection where it belongs. 🩷

[flecker-illustrates]

Michael you're killing me with your acting choices. Aziraphale placing his hand just above Crowley's heart wasn't on my S2 bingo card

[stephanieratt]

For one night only, come play witness to the magic of the great Aziraphale!

[pratchettquotes]

There was the sound of shuffling and the click-click of a walking stick, and a bent, elderly figure appeared in the gray, dead, dusty air.

"Groat, sir," it wheezed. "Junior Postman Groat, sir. At your service, sir. One word from you, sir, and I will leap, sir, leap into action, sir." The figure stopped to cough long and hard, making a noise like a wall being hit repeatedly with a bag of rocks. Moist saw that it had a beard of the short, bristled type, which suggested that its owner had been interrupted halfway through eating a hedgehog.

Terry Pratchett, Going Postal

[coolittleguy]

I’m pretty sure I kin Aziraphale because I’m in love with Crowley, and that’s the most Aziraphaleish one can get.

[chronoarts]

SOOOO fucking excited to see David and Michael with red and white hair again. I don't think you'll ever hear from me again once filming starts and once behind the scenes content gets out. It'll be a fucking international holiday once filming for GO3 starts.

[do-you-fancy-a-fine-fabric]

Good Omens Fans…

[captainfantasticalright]

Let there be light: and how light in Good Omens 2 represents loss and change. Focusing only on Aziraphale for this specific post.

Before the beginning: light already establishes itself as the beginning, but also one of the cataclysmic events through Aziraphale's eyes. It brings about the end; it sets time in motion only to make it stop ticking too. The first being that we see the light on is Aziraphale.

I want to emphasize that lighting is purposely directed and created, especially within the Soho set. Before Aziraphale"loses" his bookshop for the first time, before Jim arrives, he is illuminated from the back. It's peaceful, serene.

Serenity is entangled with the loss of"truth". There's a focus on light the first time we openly see Aziraphale lie to Gabriel.(He had openly lied to God before on the wall of Eden, right under her light).

This is the light reflecting Aziraphale's loss again. He has just severed himself partly from the "good". It's lonely, beautiful and complicated.

Light shines partly on him when he realizes the weight that his own morals brought down on Morag and Elspeth. He's gained insight, but at the cost of loss.

Of course very intentionally placing himself on the center stage. Light shining on him to literally focus how life threatening a false move could be. & Candle light at another moment of loss- but loss is not always meant in a negative way.This is the transformation into a less lonely, beautiful terrain of shades of grey.

Light before he loses the bookshop a second time here. But also shining through Crowley's words of not leaving him alone.

Most poignantly: light before he loses the bookshop a last time. To underline once again how important light is, Gavin Finney pointed this out about this specific scene: The beams of light are purposely directed to where they want them to in the acting area and they wanted it to be glorious for this moment (the kiss) in the bookshop.

"He is about to lose the bookshop so it's important that it looks even more sunny and beautiful".

Lastly, the light inside the lift is always there, true, but it's also the last time light illuminates Aziraphale in season 2. Which in this case, might be a precursor for another loss, and definitely indicates another change.

[sayuri-of-the-valley]

"[...] said Aziraphale, who had never done other to get rid of demons than to hint to them very strongly that he, Aziraphale, had some work to be getting on with, and wasn't it getting late? And Crowley had always got the hint."

Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch - Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

[zeldamacgregor]

the way I cry like a little baby when Adam says "I'm just a kid" and Aziraphale says "...but that's not a bad thing to be." god I fucking love that moment. and I think about all the times I needed to hear it and it's just the most perfect thing.

[luxferens]

Last weekend we've been visiting London to shoot some special pics in special places 💖 Those are previews straight out from the photographer's camera, more edited pics coming soon! (All costumes are handmade) -

📸Photo/video: Xara 🐍Crowley: (yours truly) 👼Aziraphale: Pao 📗Anathema: Nymie

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( @neil-gaiman , @fuckyeahgoodomens sorry for the tag but you might like this? Hopefully 🙏?)