Several cookbooks and chefs advise roasting root vegetables to bring out their earthy sweetness. In Scotland, turnips or rutabagas are boiled and mashed and traditionally served with mashed potatoes as "tatties and neeps" ("tatties" being the Scottish word for potatoes), with the Scottish national dish of haggis. Rutabagas are often called "swedes" because they're so common in Sweden, where they're mashed with butter and milk into "rotmos" (root mash). "You use one-fourth the amount of parsnips as potatoes, and cook and mash them together," he said. "And parsnips and mashed potatoes are so good together," he added. He likes to make a soup with parsnips and salsify, another root vegetable that's little known in the United States. We'd serve it with fresh peas from the garden." "Every Sunday it was a family tradition in most Australian and English homes to have a roast - in our house it was a leg of lamb - and put parsnips, turnips, potatoes and carrots in to roast in the lamb juice. Parsnips and turnips are more popular in England and Australia, said Peter Hodgson, chef at the University Park Marriott who grew up in Canberra, Australia. Parsnips often get passed up because they "look like dirty anemic carrots," the editors of Cook's Illustrated magazine wrote in their book, "Perfect Vegetables" (America's Test Kitchen, $29.95). (To paraphrase Shakespeare, would a rutabaga by any other name sound more appealing?) And turnips also have a stigma - consider the saying, "I didn't just fall off a turnip truck." But it may take more coaxing to start a rutabaga renaissance.įor starters, there's the name. Sweet potatoes have also found new fans, appearing in soups, souffles and even french fries. A signature dish at New York City's Union Square Cafe is creamy mashed yellow turnips (they're actually rutabagas) with crispy shallots.īeets, another root vegetable, came into vogue a few years ago when stylish chefs studded salads with roasted beets in hues from gold to purple. More root vegetables are also showing up on a few trendy menus. "It was light and healthy, with squash and different seasonings like cinnamon and sage," he said. "īorski and his wife, Heather, recently used some of their home-grown parsnips in a pasta recipe from Cooking Light. "But now people are looking for something different, so some of those unpopular vegetables are starting to become popular. "I grew a lot of them a few years ago and couldn't sell them," said John Borski, a Kaysville farmer and regular at the Downtown Farmers Market.
But with farmers markets and the "eat-local" mantra gathering steam, people may well turn to their roots, so to speak. Consequently, these old-fashioned vegetables, long associated with hardship, fell out of favor. Today, you can run to the grocery store in January and find fresh baby lettuce, artichokes or avocados shipped from warmer climates. In a cold, dry environment, these vegetables could keep for several months - until the first greens of spring showed up. In the fall, farm families would store such items as potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips and rutabagas in an underground cellar (hence the term "root cellar"). Compared to glamorous produce such as asparagus and tomatoes, they seem dull and boring.ĭepending on how they're cooked, they can end up with spongy textures, strong odors and harsh flavors, adding further to their image problems.īut before refrigeration and global shipping of food, root vegetables were the mainstay of winter diets. They're the wallflowers of the veggie world - turnips, parsnips and rutabagas.
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