The great new root vegetable riddle solved

I found this enormous and mysterious root vegetables in Leila’s iconic grocery shop on Calvert Avenue E2 where there was some confusion as to what it might be and wore an Italian name which now escapes all of us. A new vegetable! My Italian friends thought it might be a topinambour – jersualem artichoke – but it was far too big for that. I hacked off the outside and trimmed it up neatly. At this stage from the smell I was anticipating a subtle, elusive, tantalising  horserdash-potato cross, a kind of lesser known cousin of celeriac. The batons took some time to cook – about 25 minutes. I served them with butter. And olive oil. I suppose I have just come to accept that the rare and mysterious find is more usually a compact, large cricket ball variation that looks like a vegan sentry or ammunition for a howitzer

The answer, disappointinlgy, is here  but thanks to Ian Neale for providing the evidence.