Competition | 7 November 2009

In Competition No. 2620 you were invited to submit an argument, in verse, for the superiority of one vegetable over another. It was Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to the artichoke’ that got me thinking about the pecking order in the vegetable kingdom. Here’s a snippet: ‘The cabbage/ Dedicated itself/ To trying on skirts,/ The oregano/ To perfuming the world,/ And the sweet/ Artichoke/ There in the garden,/ Dressed like a warrior,/ Burnished/ Like a proud/ Pomegranate…’ In a bumper crop of entries Martin Parker impressed, as did Frank Osen, David Mackie, Ray Kelley, Robert Schechter and Juliet Walker. In fact, you were all on sparkling form. But there’s room for only six winners, who are rewarded with £25 each. W.J Webster gets £30.

As for my pantheon of veg, the sprout
Is in, the artichoke as surely out.
(No, not the so-called ‘globe’, whose leaves you pluck
To give you something minuscule to suck:
Jerusalem’s the name my bête grise bears —
A golden guise to mask its grubby wares.)
It has a flavour no known sauce can cloak
And makes unwary diners gag and choke;
An earthy taste that seems to soil the tongue
No more to savour, say, than camel dung.
Consider now the modest Brussels sprout
All freshly gathered from its knobbly knout;
Prepared with ease and cooked to leave some bite
It makes a nut-sweet nugget of delight.
No one of subtle sense could ever doubt
The artichoke is worsted by the sprout.
W.J. Webster

The dull potato has been staking claims,
Boasting varietals with fancy names.
This humble tuber with its knobs and faults
Would seek to rank with grapes and single malts.
The carrot looks on loftily and smiles,
Rising above such disingenuous wiles.
Its tapered form one cannot but admire.
Redolent of a slim cathedral spire,
Or of some elegant chivalric lance,
The true embodiment of high romance,
The Don Quixote of the gastrosphere
For whom the role of Sancho in the rear
The maladroit potato makes its own,
Submissive to the carrot’s flaming cone.