Turnips

Week: 2
Ingredient: Turnips
From: Martin’s, Harrisonburg, VA
Recipe: Mashed Turnips

Last night was a disaster! No, not the turnips; they turned out fine (more on that later). I am more interested in sharing about the conflict and resolution that played out in my little dinner party drama last night.

If you have read a few of my previous posts, you know that I have been planning to cook a capon. My new roasting pan arrived a little over a week ago, so I started making real plans. I invited some friends over for dinner on Saturday night. All week, I made my preparations: picking recipes, cleaning house, grocery shopping, advance prep work, etc.

Saturday afternoon, everything was in order so that I could start cooking. I pulled my capon out of the refrigerator to sit at room temperature for thirty minutes before going into the oven. I softened a stick of butter in the microwave, peeled some garlic cloves, and washed my fresh herbs. I adjusted my oven racks to fit the shiny, new roasting pan. I put a clean tablecloth on the kitchen table. I spent some time reviewing recipes, and I turned on the oven to preheat. I took the capon out of its packaging, and removed the giblets ...

Well, the perfect dinner party ended right there because I did not actually remove the giblets. I tried to remove the giblets. After getting past the thick wire that bound the legs together, I found the giblets were frozen solid in the cavity of the fat, castrated rooster that was supposed to be my dinner. Blargh!

Apparently four days in my refrigerator was not enough time to thaw the frozen 9-pound bird. When I discovered my dilemma, it was too late even to think of trying the cold water method to thaw the capon quickly. There was really no wiggle room in my schedule. Besides, Cris was already at my house doing some electrical work. (Thanks, Cris!) I could not push dinner back to who knows when. I needed a plan B.

There are plenty of options when a dinner fails: go out, order in, make do with what you have ... Somehow, all those options were so unsatisfying when what I was looking forward to was a good, home-cooked meal shared with friends. In the end, I stuck with my original menu but with one substitution: pan-fried pork chops instead of roast capon. Not bad for plan B (although it did require a quick trip to Red Front). The pork chops were quick and easy, but very tasty. I served them with a bottle of wine that I bought because the label was pretty (Juan Gil Jumilla 2003—beautiful dark color, soft and smooth, deep, rich flavor, slightly sweet, with a little spice—delicious!). We also had a green salad with apples, walnuts and a maple vinaigrette. The cauliflower gratin was to-die-for (probably literally with all that butter, cream, and Gruyère). And Andrea’s desserts—eggnog cheesecake and butterscotch pudding with bananas—were outstanding served with French pressed coffee.

I really cannot complain about the meal. The only problem is that now I will have to cook the capon mid-week, and I have no dinner guests lined up. However, I am sure I will manage. Now on to the turnips ...

There is not much to say about the turnips. I consulted a few cookbooks, and they said you could prepare turnips in basically any way you would prepare potatoes. So, I boiled them, drained them, mashed them, and added a little butter, salt, and pepper. Voilà—mashed turnips, a simple preparation that allows the flavor of the turnips to shine through. The flavor was pleasantly pungent, and the texture was slightly stringy. Not bad, but I think I prefer mashed potatoes. I might experiment sometime with adding a few turnips to my mashed potatoes to give them a subtle pungency without losing the superior texture of the potatoes.

Conclusion: I probably did not give turnips a fair shot. So soon after the disappointment of the semi-frozen capon and the jubilation of the cauliflower gratin, mashed turnips were too mundane to excite more than passive acceptance. Sorry, turnips. Better luck next time.