The UK environment secretary, Thérèse Coffey, has caused a furore after she suggested people should “cherish” seasonal foods such as turnips as bad weather cleared supermarket shelves of tomatoes and other fresh produce. “It’s important to make sure that we cherish the specialisms that we have in this country,” Coffey told parliament. “A lot of people would be eating turnips right now rather than thinking necessarily about aspects of lettuce and tomatoes and similar.” With a love of turnips more commonly associated with the long-suffering manservant Baldrick in Blackadder, Coffey handed her critics the kind of material they could normally only dream of. “Let them eat turnips!” suggested the Labour MP Ben Bradshaw, using the hashtag #TomatoShortages, as “turnips” started to trend on Twitter timelines for possibly the first time. Coffey made her comments after being called to the Commons to answer an urgent question about supermarket rationing of salad ingredients, owing to shortages caused by bad weather in Spain and north Africa. She had been trying to make a point about eating seasonally. “I’m conscious that consumers want a year-round choice and that is what our supermarkets, food producers and growers around the world try to satisfy,” she added. Was a bounty of this unloved root vegetable part of the promised Brexit dividend? people asked, as they shared doctored images of campaign buses emblazoned with “forget tomatoes, let’s eat turnips instead”. @theNewEuropean asked whether Brexit might be a factor in the tomato shortage alongside an image of what looked like Spain’s annual La Tomatina tomato fight. The realities of eating seasonally – and not relying on imported food – were not lost on people who persevere with their veg box delivery through the winter months. As the parsnips, swedes and butternut squash pile up in kitchen cupboards, many could be forgiven for shedding a tear just thinking about cherry tomatoes. For inspiration, one person shared a link to a poster for an Ann Widdecombe-fronted post-Brexit cookery series called 101 Ways with Turnips, complete with blurb promising “hours of fun with your weekly turnip ration!” After enduring an avalanche of turnip jokes, Downing Street stepped in to defend Coffey, saying she had been promoting British vegetables. The prime ministerial spokesperson also rejected suggestions Brexit was to blame for the lack of cucumber availability. He said: “We don’t believe it is for us to tell people what they should or shouldn’t buy – that is entirely a matter for them. I think what the secretary of state was doing was setting out the importance of celebrating the produce that we grow here in the UK but, ultimately, it is for individuals to decide what food they wish to buy.” Asked if Brexit had had an impact on shortages, he said: “The industry and retailers themselves have spoken about the reason for some of the supply issues we are facing, notably poor weather in certain parts of southern Europe and north Africa.” Those lucky enough to have a turnip but who are unsure of what to cook with it may want to rewatch Blackadder for inspiration from Baldrick, not least his recipe for turnip surprise. A one-pot wonder, the surprise – spoiler alert – is there’s nothing else in it except the turnip.