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Category: Turnips

  • Turnip and Arugula Salad with Honey, Almonds and Mint

    Turnip and Arugula Salad is simple and satisfying using only a few ingredients. Add grains like quinoa or protein like grilled tofu or salmon for an easy meal.

    Turnip and Arugula Salad with Honey, Almonds and Mint
    Makes about 4 servings

    3 or 4 hakurei turnips thinly sliced
    2 T fresh lemon juice or more as needed
    1 t honey)
    3/4 t salt
    4 cups washed and loosely packed arugula
    A small handful of fresh mint leaves or basil or parsley
    2 T Olive oil or more as needed
    Optional but delicious so you should add one or more! 1/4 c sliced almonds-or any nut chopped-Cheese, avocado, grains, any additional toppings you like!

    Directions:
    Combine the sliced turnips in a small bowl with the lemon juice, honey, and  salt. Let sit for 5 minutes, tossing occasionally.  (I put the mint in there, opps)

    Combine the arugula and mint in a medium bowl, drizzle on the oil. Add the turnips and dressing to the arugula and toss to incorporate. Taste, and season with more lemon juice, oil, and/or salt as needed.

    Add delicious optional ingredients and dig in.

    Happy eating — see you at pickup! Mo

  • Hakurei Salad with Poppy Seed Dressing

    Hakurei turnips are a perfect addition to any simple salad. Hakurei’s are juicy and sweet eaten raw. Cooked they become pleasantly soft and buttery.

    I made an old school Honey Poppyseed dressing here. I really like to have a few sauces and dressings in my refrigerator at the ready. This dressing is a great one to have on hand, it’s delicious and keeps for a long time and goes great with any seasonal green or chopped vegetable.

    Poppyseed dressing

    • 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
    • 3 Tablespoons apple cider vinegar
    • 3 Tablespoons honey can substitute with agave or maple syrup if vegan
    • 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
    • 1 teaspoon poppy seeds
    • pinch salt

    Put everything in a jar with a lid and shake it really well.

    For the salad wash and dry your greens and other salad ingredients, tear large leaves into bite size pieces and slice the Hakurei turnips as thinly as possible. A mandolin works great here. Toss the sliced turnips with a splash of dressing to coat and separate the slices.

    Toss everything together and enjoy!

  • Citrus Glazed Hakurei Turnips

    One of the most cooked and loved recipes on the Red Wagon blog is Miso Maple Turnips.  Here is very similar dish but this has an easy to make sauce that is has a bright citrus essence rather than a deep warm miso note of the older recipe. Try both!

    So fast and simple. You need.

    • 1 bunch of turnips washed and I cut mine into 1/8ths.
    • 3 tablespoons of butter
    • about 1/2 cup of orange juice. I had ‘cutie’ mandarins and used three and didn’t quite have a half cup. I went with that. As always adjust as needed.
    • Olive oil and salt, pepper for roasting the turnips (and delicata).
    • Optional toppings like red pepper flakes, nuts or peel from the citrus.

    To roast the turnips preheat the oven to 400F, mine took about 25 minutes to roast. I had extra room on my baking tray so I roasted a delicata squash on the other half of the tray because you can never had too many roasted vegetables in your life!

    Juice the citrus and put that and the butter into a pan to melt and reduce the liquid to thicken while the turnips are roasting.

    Check the turnips after 25 minutes, they are done when they are turning brown and tender when you poke them with a fork or sharp knife. Take them out of the oven and add them to the pan with the citrus butter and let all that simmer together until the sauce thickens.

    It looks like I’m making candy. Don’t worry. It’s not too sweet it just sticks to the turnips as it gets thick.

    That is it. A lovely dish to go with just about anything. This time of year I think about the holidays and food, a lot. This would be a really nice dish to go with any holiday food. It is light and bright and you could easily make it ahead and warm it up before serving or even serve it at room temperature.

    What are you doing with your turnips? Let us know in the comments.

    Have a great week.

    Mo

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Mashed Root Vegetables

    In the Fall when vegetables like rutabagas, parsnips, purple top turnips, and celery root (aka celeriac) start showing up in our CSA share it’s the first time some people have seen these and of course they want to know what to do with them. I always say the same thing; anything you can do with a potato you can do with any root vegetable and, they are all interchangeable. Not only are they interchangeable they are so interesting and delicious together, mix and match any and all you have.  Baked, mashed, roasted, au gratin, scalloped, and grilled you can do it all with any of them.

    Today I was making some mashed potatoes and I had some parsnips, celery root, carrots and a rutabaga so I am making a mixed root vegetable mash instead of just plain mashed potatoes.

    Peel and cut up whatever vegetables you are using. I didn’t peel my potatoes or carrots but I did peel everything else.

    Put the peeled and diced vegetables in some salted water.  Bring that to a low boil and cook until the vegetables are very tender. I cooked mine about for about 25 minutes. I added some pepper and herbs too. Celery root floats, weird huh?

    Drain the cooked vegetables and fish out any herbs if you added them.

    I was making this for a simple weeknight meal so I wanted to keep it light so I used milk and some olive oil. If I was making this for Christmas or Thanksgiving I would use heavy cream and lots of butter. The cream and butter make it fluffier.

    I just eyeball the amounts and err on the side of less because I can always add more.

    Milk and olive oil in the pan, oh, I rinsed out the pan.

    Add the veg back and mash and taste to see if you want more salt or olive oil or butter if you are using that.

    I like my mash a little lumpy. Keep mashing if you like yours lump free.

    That’s it. So easy and quick and deliciously earthy and complex compared to just plain mashed potatoes.

    So good. Enjoy your winter vegetables.

    Mo

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Grilled Hakurei Turnips with Lemon Cream

    Last week I posted a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, Six Seasons.

    I, like you, have a lot of Hakurei turnips in my life right now and I was trying to think of something different to do with them that I hadn’t made before. Six Seasons cookbook was sitting on the counter and I was flipping through and saw a recipe for Lemon Cream and was intrigued with the description; “a light, almost feminine dressing”.

    I love Hakurei turnips cooked. Whether roasted, grilled or pan fried, they become juicy and a little sweet, unlike their crunchy-sharp raw selves.

    I decided to make the lemon dressing and grill some turnips.

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    Can you kind of see how they get juicy when you cook them? Look at the lightly dressed lettuce. The lemon cream was perfect for this salad.

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    To grill the turnips I cut them in 1/2, I left some of the stem on and tossed them with olive oil and salt and pepper and grilled them on a hot grill for 3 or 4 minutes each side.

     

    My turnip leaves weren’t great or I would have grilled them separately and used those for a bed of greens and dressed them with the lemon cream.  Instead, I used the beautiful lettuce we got instead and tossed the greens with the grilled turnips and the dressing.

    Here is the lemon cream recipe and my notes, this makes about 3/4 cup

    • 4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled (I used 2 garlic scapes chopped
    • 1/2 cup heavy cream
    • salt and pepper
    • 1/2 teaspoon grated lemon zest
    • About 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
    • 2 tablespoons olive oil

    Put garlic and cream in medium bowl and let infuse for 2 hours in the refrigerator, so the cream takes on a gentle garlic flavor (I just mixed it all up).

    Fish out the garlic cloves from the cream (I left the garlic in), season generously with salt and lots of twists of pepper, and then add the lemon zest. Begin whisking the cream. Once it starts to thicken, add 2 tablespoons lemon juice and the olive oil. Keep whisking until it is light and airy. It won’t be thick like fully whipped cream, but it will have a nice creamy texture. Taste and adjust with more salt, pepper, or lemon juice. Use this dressing within a day.

    I forgot to take a picture of the Lemon Cream mixed alone. It got nice and thick, but not too thick. It just coated everything and didn’t glob on the leaves and weigh the lettuce down but it coated everything really nicely.

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    I hope you are enjoying your CSA. Leave a comment if you have any questions or suggestions.

    See you at pickup.

    Mo

     

     

     

  • Turnip Salad with Yogurt, Herbs & Poppy Seeds

    I saw this salad in a cookbook I really like called Six Seasons.

    I have mentioned that I like to clean my refrigerator of all my vegetable odds and ends the day before my CSA pick-up. I did that today and found I had everything I needed for this nice herby salad.

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    I pretty much followed the recipe. I made a couple changes. I’ll note the changes in the recipe.

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    TURNIP SALAD WITH YOGURT, HERBS & POPPY SEEDS
    SERVES: 4

    • 1 bunch of Japanese turnips, with their tops if they’re nice and fresh, or use any greens you have for the salad bed.
    • 1 lemon, halved
    • 1/2 teaspoon dried red chili flakes
    • kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
    • 1/2 cup plain whole-milk yogurt
    • about 1 cup lightly packed mixed herbs: (mint leaves, parsley leaves, chives, and sorrel is what I had) finely chop those
    • 4 scallions, trimmed including the green tops
    • extra virgin olive oil
    • 1/4 cup poppy seeds
    • honey to taste

    Preparation

    Slice the turnips as thin as you can. If you have a mandolin, use it; otherwise a sharp knife will work just fine.

    Rinse, dry and roughly chop what ever greens you are using.  Toss them with a little olive oil and a little vinegar. I used red wine vinegar.

    Put the turnips in a large bowl and squeeze half of the lemon. Add the chili flakes, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and plenty of black pepper and toss to blend. Add the yogurt and toss again. Add the herbs, scallions, and about 1/4 cup olive oil and toss again. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed. This is where I added a little honey, it wasn’t in the original recipe but I thought it needed a little sweetness to counter the tang of the yogurt and the tartness of the lemon.
    Scatter about half of the poppy seeds on the bottom of the platter or individual serving
    plates, top with the turnip salad, and finish the the rest of the poppy seeds.

    This was really good and would go really well with some grilled fish or meat or just some bread and cheese.

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    Have a great week. I’ll see you at pick-up.

    Mo

  • Snow Pea, Kohlrabi and Turnip Rice Bowl

    This is my go-to-dinner-on-the-table-in-20-minutes dish. I posted this blog several years ago. It’s pretty much the same dish, only different vegetables and a little different preparation. It’s a good basic recipe that you can adapt to what you have on hand.

    This time, I made the basic broth/sauce in the first recipe but added a couple tablespoons of peanut butter. You can use another butter, or leave it out all together. In the original blog I added the vegetables to the broth to cook them. This time I sauteed the vegetables in a separate pan and poured the broth into the bowl because I wanted the vegetables, especially the snow peas, to be crunchy.

    This will serve 4 people

    For the broth you will need;

    • 1 14-ounce can full-fat coconut milk
    • 1/2 can water (use the coconut can to measure)
    • 4 Tablespoons ginger, peeled and grated
    • 2 tablespoons of nut butter, I used peanut butter
    • 1/2 cup of onions or shallots
    • Juice of one or two limes, taste it after one lime and add more if you need to
    • 1 or 2 chilies, like Serrano or jalapeno (optional)
    • 1 tablespoon brown sugar

     

    Combine all these ingredients in a pan and bring to a gentle boil. While that is cooking prepare your vegetables.

    Use lots of seasonal vegetables, at least 1 1/2 cup per person. These are the vegetables I used.

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    Fava beans, turnips, snow peas and kohrabi. Peel and cut the vegetables into bite size pieces. I had some mushrooms I forgot to put in the picture, oops.

    Cook the vegetables until they are tender.

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    That’s it. Serve it in a bowl with rice or noodles and pour the broth in the bowl.

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    It takes longer to make the rice or noodles than the rest of the dish. Leftovers are great the next day with a hard boiled egg!

    Have a great week,

    Mo

     

  • Kohlrabi Turnip Salad with Tahini Dressing

    If you aren’t familiar with kohlrabi you might want to have a quick look here. Basically kohlrabi is a brassica that taste like a tender peeled broccoli stem and the texture is more like an apple. If you haven’t had kohlrabi before I suggest you peel it and slice it and eat it like an apple. Delish.

    Kohlrabi is great raw or just slightly cooked, like in a stir-fry.

    I made a simple salad with some of my CSA share. This would have been really good with the Tokyo cabbage we got earlier, but I had spinach so that is what I used. Anyway. This is what I had.

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    Kohlrabi, spinach, turnips, parsley, and radishes.

    I chopped everything up into salad-bite size pieces. I used a really cheap mandolin to make the job go really fast, but you can use a knife too.

    I made a tahini dressing (I’ll post the recipe at the bottom of this page.) and I added a few currents and chopped nuts and a half of an avocado that was lurking alone in the vegetable drawer and I tossed it all together.

    This was a substantial salad, you could add a protein like tofu or chicken and have a meal. It’s nice and crunchy with unusual textures and flavors.

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    Kohlrabi Salad with Tahini Dressing 

    For the salad;

    • 3 small kohlrabi peeled and cut salad sized
    • a CSA share of spinach or cabbage
    • a handful of chopped parsley or basil, or another soft herb
    • a handful of currants or raisins or nuts. Granola with be good here too.
    • salt and pepper to taste

    For the dressing;

    • 1/4 cup tahini
    • juice from 1/2 a lemon, you might need more
    • 2 teaspoons honey
    • 1 clove of garlic, minced
    • 3 Tablespoons water + more to thin if necessary. I made mine pretty thin, you might not want it that thin
    • salt and pepper to taste

    Prepare all the vegetables and put them in a big bowl. Make the dressing by combining all the ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly with a fork until everything is smooth.  Now decide if the dressing is  too thick add a little water until it is the consistency you are looking for. Mix the dressing with the  vegetables and dump everything into a serving bowl.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Roasted Hakurei Turnips with Miso and Maple Syrup

    I am often asked what is my favorite way to eat Hakurei turnips? My answer usually is, ‘pull them out of the ground, wipe off most of the soil and eat them like an apple’.

    That was until I tried Hakurei turnips roasted with a miso, maple syrup and butter glaze.

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    These are so juicy and earthy delicious and so simple to make. Here is how you do it:

    • Preheat your oven to 425F and wash and cut up a bunch of Hakurei’s into quarters.
    • Toss the turnips in oil, any oil and sprinkle some salt on them and roast them until they are just turning a little brown. About 20 or 25 minutes
    • Make a glaze of equal parts; white miso, butter, and maple syrup (I used about 1 tablespoon of each, miso, maple syrup and butter) and either melt it in a pan on the stove or microwave the mix until it is just melted and taste and smell that. OMG, I want to eat this with a spoon, or on popcorn.
    • When the turnips are lightly roasted brush the melted glaze on the turnips and  return them to the oven for another 10 minutes or so to brown the glaze.

    Here are some pictures showing the steps.

    • cut up
    • roasted with oil and salt until brown
    • apply the miso glaze
    • roast until brown

    Yummy.

    I think this glaze will work on any roasted vegetable. I have a little leftover and I have some vegetables that need using up. I think I’ll try it. I’ll report back and let you know how I like it on other vegetables.

    Only 3 CSA pickups left! Have a great week.

    Mo

  • Sauteed Turnips

    I used this recipe but omitted the soy sauce because I wanted the white and pink color and not a brown (other than the caramelizing from the braising).

    • 1 Tbsp butter
    • 2-3 scarlet turnips, sliced thinly
    • 1 tsp soy sauce, or Bragg’s Liquid Aminos

    Melt your butter in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the turnip slices and sauté for a few minutes until they start to brown. Add a splash of water or broth, stir, and cover with a lid to braise the turnips until tender, about 8 minutes. Check and stir them periodically. They should be golden-brown in places, almost caramelizing, when they are done, and tender all the way through. Add your soy sauce directly to the pan. Eat!

    It looked like this:

    Add turnips and sauté.

    Sliced Turnips

    Add a splash of water. That is water boiling. It looks like oil, huh?

    Saute Turnips

    Nicely BrownedAfter the turnips have been covered with a lid and braised.