now I want root vegetable stew

[cimorene]

While I have a clear mental image and concept of the nature of both leeks and parsnips, I keep mixing them up in translation exercises absent-mindedly because the idea of preparing, eating, or buying just one of them without a full array of other root vegetables in the same dish still doesn't really compute (I have this problem in Swedish and Finnish too. In fact, I just double-checked the terms in Finnish right now). It's like my brain refuses to recognize that it matters if I'm not concentrating. I'm sure that if I knew the words for rutabaga, fennel root, and celeriac, all of them would get the same treatment (even though fennel fronds are independently useful in my experience).

I've been informed that in Wales leeks are commonly seen on pizza, which is funny but honestly not weirder than the Finnish or Japanese pizzas I've seen. Less weird, really.

Comments

[spark]

And an additional vocab complication in translation from English: the root veg that are called rutabaga in the USA are called turnip here, and the smaller white with purple tops veg that are called turnip in the USA don't exist here.

[hebethen]

Huh, I vaguely knew there was some kind of terminological Thing with root vegetables between US and UK, but I had no idea it was of this nature! And looking it up on the ole wikipeds returned this nugget of knowledge: "originated as a cross between the cabbage and the turnip". WHAT.

[cimorene]

hahahah WHAT

[spark]

Half the vegetable aisle is a mutant form of cabbage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassicaceae.

[cimorene]

But I checked and yes, we totally have 'white turnip' or Brassica rapa rapa in Finland as well. It's called nauris. But at least my wife doesn't typically buy it when she's making root vegetable stew.

[brewsternorth]

It's a little bizarre to have leek pizza, but I guess the flavour once they're fried is probably akin to onions, which are much more canonical.

[cimorene]

Yeah, I'd guess they're still like onions but milder more or less.

[spark]

Often it's a white pizza and frequently with goat cheese or with bacon.

[cimorene]

That makes sense, flavor-wise, I think. And yeah, I've substituted leek for onion myself before (with varying levels of success), so if it grows readily in the garden there it's understandable.

[brewsternorth]

Nice. I was thinking it'd go best with a white pizza.

[spark]

I shall also add that my friend from the midlands whose romantic history is primarily with Welsh men sometimes refers to himself as a "leek chaser" ;)

[cimorene]

I'm starting to get a picture of an extremely high cultural importance of leeks, which is... possibly the most strange and unexpected new fact I've learned about Wales recently. I guess it makes more sense than the parsnips that Duolingo tells me Owen is selling at his nightclub (and taking with him on an Antarctic expedition... and eating in the hospital...)

[spark]

They're on the Welsh 1£ coin!

[twistedchick]

I think of leeks as half-onion, and parsips as pale carrots, if that's any use.

[torachan]

Onion is pretty common on pizza in the US and leeks are a type of onion, so it doesn't seem that weird to me. It sounds pretty good, but I can't eat onions anymore. ;_;

I really wish we could more easily get some of the wilder pizza toppings here that are common in other countries. (There are generally places where you can get stuff like that, like I know there's an awesome pizza place in Koreatown, but it's not something I can just get delivered like Dominos.)

[cimorene]

Leek is a type of allium, but it's more a cousin to the domesticated onions than a type of them since it's more closely related to garlic. It definitely has an onion-like flavor, as do chives and green onions, but it's much milder and also has a distinct own flavor that can render recipes really weird if you substitute indiscriminately with it, as I discovered in the process of using up summer produce. Plus since it looks quite different, I think a lot of Americans would be taken aback.