#Terry pratchett | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dduane · 3 days

Text

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.

#parsnips #parsnip soup #Good Omens #Terry Pratchett #Neil Gaiman #recipes

374 notes · View notes

somewhere-south-of-neutral · 2 days

Text

Every one of you needs to read Going Postal by Terry Pratchett right now. Especially if you do anything related to tech, finance, or public services. I am not kidding.

#gnu terry pratchett #discworld #terry pratchett #going postal

236 notes · View notes

alispangles · 2 days

Text

“Commander Vimes didn't like the phrase 'The innocent have nothing to fear', believing the innocent had everything to fear, mostly from the guilty but in the longer term even more from those who say things like 'The innocent have nothing to fear'.” -- Discworld (Snuff)

#discworld #fanart #vimes #terry pratchett #city watch

224 notes · View notes

nival-kenival · 13 hours

Text

I thought the reason I became so easily obsessed with leverage came out of no where, until I went back to read one of my early teenage favourite Going Postal by Terry Pratchett and everything clicked into place

Tell me that this isn't Nate's whole spiel

#leverage #going postal #terry pratchett #nathan ford #moist von lipwig

99 notes · View notes

pratchettquotes · 2 days

Text

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

#moist von lipwig #tolliver groat #going postal #discworld #terry pratchett #character introduction #character description #post office #first day of work #junior postman #old #coughing #home remedies #hedgehogs #leap into action #halfway through eating a hedgehog

94 notes · View notes

stupidphototricks · 3 days

Text

Witches in rural Discworld do everything. They're de facto country doctors, midwives, morticians, veterinarians, small claims court judges, food pantries, emergency services, just whatever. And 90% of it isn't even magic (though they can do incredible things), it's working hard and helping people and being respectable and a good person and making everyone a little bit afraid of you.

(Meanwhile all those venerable wizards up at Unseen University are like, accidentally opening portals to faraway lands or creating new gods or becoming obsessed with Music With Rocks In and basically being chaotic and useless, I'm just saying)

#terry pratchett #gnu terry pratchett #discworld #witches

143 notes · View notes

captainfantasticalright · 3 days

Text

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.

#good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #neil gaiman #terry pratchett #good omens fun facts #good omens 2 #let there be light #meta #gavin finney

74 notes · View notes

country-father-security-stock · 6 hours

Text

#terry pratchett #jungkook x reader #pie #heartbroken #helmut newton #pop music #blaine anderson #velma #notprojustusingthetags #motocross #black girl beauty #greek myth #kaisoo #ciara

130 notes · View notes

course-control-stock · 2 days

Text

#gay briefs #thickwomen #emily bett rickards #terry pratchett #bruce springsteen #jungkook x reader #80s horror #amor propio #philza minecraft #自撮り #heartbroken

123 notes · View notes

projectorthus · 3 days

Text

Tonker and Lofty on the brain again.

I like to think they’re off committing crimes together.

#monstrous regiment #discworld #discworld fanart #terry pratchett #gnu terry pratchett #art #fan art #comic

72 notes · View notes

we-movie-course-bag · 3 days

Text

#dark academia books #kenma x reader #killian jones #gay briefs #terry pratchett #bruce springsteen #jungkook x reader #80s horror #amor propio #philza minecraft

120 notes · View notes

belpheg0r-luna · 21 hours

Text

"Part of a demon's job description. Unforgivable, that's what i am." There is no love without forgiveness. Shes saying that she's unlovable by nature.

39 notes · View notes

moss-ghoulette · 2 days

Text

There's a lot of lilac near my house

Had to take some pictures before it's gone (will take some more)

#discworld #the glorious 25th of may #night watch #gnu terry pratchett #terry pratchett #pterry

47 notes · View notes

rincewinds-hat · 2 days

Text

I got a bad grade in math (i still passed, so im happy about that lol) and i was feeling bad about that - mostly because i used to be awesome at math.

Then i was like 'Rincewind is a terrible wizard, but he's still a wizard' so maybe it's okay to not be the greatest at something, because at least you're doing it.

I may not be Van Gogh, but at least im actually creating something.

Maybe im not Pterry, but at least im writing.

And you know what? That's okay. That's enough for me

#terry pratchett #rincewind #van gogh #omg im so smart #very wise #jk #this was a rare thought that made sence

39 notes · View notes

streej · 2 days

Text

Letter for you!

#by streej #illustration #digital art #artists on tumblr #digital drawing #terry pratchett #discworld #moist von lipwig

28 notes · View notes

chronoarts · 2 days

Text

I have this AU (idea) where (fem)Aziraphale is a mermaid and Crowley is a pirate. Aziraphale is about 20 feet long and Crowley is the captain of a crew that has, historically, hunted mermaids and sirens. I HAVE ART OF HER but it's not.. not done.

Staring at my drawing tablet

One day it will be!

#david tennant #michael sheen #good omens #good omens au #good omens crowley #crowley #fem aziraphale #good omens aziraphale #neil gaiman #terry pratchett

32 notes · View notes