Rutabagas

I was playing on Pinterest last week and found something interesting. It was a way to cook rutabagas, or turnip as I know it better, without having to cut off the heavy waxy coating and peel.

This is a very dense vegetable, and I have always found it difficult to cut and peel. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t cooked it for years.

I never sampled this strong tasting vegetable until the first holiday dinner I had with my in-laws. Mashed turnip was a tradition, and I found I loved it, when served with potatoes, dressing and turkey. My father-in-law told me a trick to tone down the strong taste was to cook a couple of potatoes with the turnip.

I bought a turnip at the grocery, eager to try this new way of microwaving the turnip, so that the peel and waxy coating came away to leave you with cooked turnip ready to mash.

Turns out, I must not have read the post well enough to note the directions, and I forgot to post it to my board of recipes. I looked for it today, couldn’t find it. So I prepared my turnip the old fashioned way, by hand, and with great effort.

I mash the turnip; add salt and pepper, butter and brown sugar, just as my father-in-law did. A couple of Christmases ago, my daughter made turnip with her holiday meal She must have remembered having it at her grandparents’, and wanted to taste it again..

I’m satisfying my yen for it today and won’t have to make this effort again for a while. Maybe I should check out the grocery store’s frozen section, satisfying my desire for turnip might be than I’d considered.