[Sca-cooks] turnips

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

Also sprach Kirsten Houseknecht:
>ok, enough about beets.... (havent liked them since i spilled beet juice on
>a white sweater)

Have you seen the Verizon ad? "Dad... that's censorship!" (I 
sympathize with the Dad, but not in this case.)

>
>turnips!
>now properly made "Armored Turnips" is very good eating, but it depends on
>youngish turnips, nice and tender

Do we still need, with the preponderance of North American 
English-speakers on this list, to be discussing the difference 
between yellow turnips, which are rutabagas and not turnips per se, 
and actual turnips? I become alarmed when I hear people discussing 
the bitterness of turnips, and have visions of people hopping their 
beer with cabbage... I can only hope the cabbage is blanched, first, 
cut down on the bitterness...

Okay, psycho mode off now... but rutabagas are pretty sharp. Turnips 
(the white ones with the purple shading on their skins) have the 
barest hint of it, and shouldn't need much to ameliorate it.

>pre cooking them well
>and the right cheese
>
>and NO ONE uses the same cheese, as far as i can tell!
>
>so, what cheeses do you use in your armored turnips?

Meunster works. If I could afford it on a feast budget I'd choose Gruyere.

<snip>

>oh, and what else do you recomend cooking with turnips? i ask partly out of
>period questions (if the turnip crop was good, what would i be making out of
>them??) and partly because they are an Atkins freindly substitute for
>potatoes.....

They're good in stews (especially lamb), and are excellent boiled 
with a piece of what people in the British Isles call "bacon", which 
is more like what Americans might call lean salt pork. I could easily 
imagine them being good in a clear, Chinese soup, using turnips 
instead of icicle radish, cooked in clear chicken stock, with a few 
black mushrooms, maybe some shredded Smithfield Ham tossed in as a 
garnish at the end, and maybe a few cilantro leaves.

Adamantius
-- 
  "Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
	-- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry 
Holt, 07/29/04