Lippe pineapple – Lippe turnip stew

Ingredients for 8 servings:

• 1 turnip(s), approx. 1 kg
• 5 thick carrots
• 500 g potatoes, floury
• 2 onions
• 2 ½ liters vegetable broth
• 5 sprigs of thyme
• 200 g smoked bacon
• 5 Mettenden, smoked (Rauchendchen)
• 500 g boneless smoked pork
• 1 tbsp mustard, medium hot
• 1 bunch parsley, flat
• Salt and pepper, black, from the mill

Instructions

Working time approx. 30 minutes; Cooking/baking time approx. 40 minutes; Total time approx. 1 hour 10 minutes

Soul food from the Principality of Lippe

Gently fry the bacon whole in a large pot over low heat. Meanwhile, peel the turnip, carrots, and potatoes and cut into equal, but not too small, cubes (approx. 1 cm). Peel the onions and dice them very finely. Remove the bacon from the pot and briefly sauté the vegetables in the rendered fat. Add 2–2.5 liters of vegetable stock, season with salt (sparingly—the stock and later the Mettenden sausages already contain a good portion of salt) and plenty of pepper. Add the bacon. Add the thyme to the soup. Simmer gently for about 20 minutes. Now add the whole smoked pork and cook it. After another 10 minutes, add the Mettenden sausages and simmer everything for another 10 minutes. At the end of the cooking time, remove the meat, let it rest for a few minutes, and then dice it. Slice the Mettenden sausages and dice the bacon. Remove the thyme sprigs from the soup. Now either mash the stew a few times with a potato masher or use a hand blender to purée the soup very briefly and intermittently to make it a little more creamy. You want to keep most of the diced vegetables. Return the sausage, bacon, and meat to the pot. Season the stew with mustard and season generously with salt and pepper. Serve the soup with freshly chopped parsley. As with all good stews: The stew gets better with each reheat! TIP: If you want to avoid the cabbage-like smell and taste of the turnip, first dice the turnip and soak it for an hour before cooking. Turnips, this classic winter vegetable (a flavor combination of kohlrabi and turnips), heartily cooked with carrots, potatoes, and not-too-lean meat, was very popular with us and I still like to cook it on cold winter days. Lippische Ananas (Lippish pineapple), what’s that? This is a regional name for the turnip from the former Free State of Lippe (capital Detmold), which became part of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1946. During the First World War, when the famine in Germany was alleviated by turnips due to poor potato harvests and the British naval blockade (the turnip winter of 1916/17), the euphemistic name “Lippische Ananas” (Lippish pineapple) was coined. Once primarily cultivated as pig feed, turnips became a daily staple due to the famine. Turnips could be made into all sorts of nutritious dishes, but their slightly unpleasant coal-like smell always lingered. People quickly grew tired of eating them. The turnip became unpopular. The melodious, slightly exotic name “Lippische Ananas” (Lippish pineapple) was intended to make the hardship a little more bearable.