Everything with Turnips is Better Without Turnips

slow roasted vegetables with olive oil, crunchy sea salt and black pepper

So, I do like them but there are so many foods to choose from, and, well, it seems no matter what we pair the turnips with, we all like everything else on our plate better.  But here are our close picks for like-able turnip dishes...

We roasted turnips, cauliflower, shitake mushrooms, beets, carrots, zucchini and yellow squash and served them with Luke's Nobu sauce.  And the thing is, some of the turnips were sweet, some a little browned and tasty but some were bitter.  They were fine in the sauce but it is tough to compete with sweet carrots or our family's favorite cauliflower or even juicy roasted squash.  And the shitake mushrooms which were practically a french fry by the time they were finished, well a turnip just simply can not hold its own against a mushroom baked in olive oil, crunchy and chewy.

vegetables in Nobu style jalapeno sauce

So I took the leftover vegetables, some of the jalapeno sauce and blended it into a root vegetable puree.  And, we tricked the Dad because, well, the root vegetable puree did look a bit like a strawberry smoothie.  He happens to hate beets so, oh well... I liked the puree alone but it was quite turnip-y tasting so I was the only taker.  So, then I added it to my butternut squash soup making it beautiful and delicious, yet I still think the soup was great with or without the turnip beet puree.  And, the beets really dressed up the turnips and who are turnips to think they can just ride the coattails of a sweet juicy beet?

root vegetable puree, perfect for strawberry smoothie switcheroo trick

root vegetable puree in my butternut squash soup, pretty tasty

So, my next turnip adventure was small roasted pieces with onions and some raw pieces tossed in a salad. And, while I do think cooking longer can make them sweeter and sort of caramelized they remained my least favorite ingredient in the salad.

So, three strikes and you are out...I think I will give the remaining ones back to Leslie who gave me a life time's supply:)