English Peas, Spring Onions and Roasted Almonds

Just cooked English peas, sautéd spring onions and roasted, salted almonds are a delicious combination of tender sweet, sweet pungent, and crunchy just salty. You can set this side dish next to grilled fish or chicken or mashed potatoes and a roast. It's...

Never miss a recipe!

Enter your email address to subscribe to Harvest to Table free via email:

Root Vegetables Category Archive

< previous | 1 2 | next >

Tokyo Turnip: Raw or Steamed

The Tokyo turnip is a diminutive, small radish-sized turnip with a crunchy, juicy bitter- sweet flavor eaten raw. Steamed it is buttery-sweet and delicate.

You will find the Tokyo turnip in early spring. You might mistake it for a white radish if you don’t look closely enough. The Tokyo turnip is white through and through.

Tokyo turnips are most often harvested at 1 to 3 inches (2.5-7.6 cm) in diameter. They will be globe shaped and perhaps slightly flattened. About 8 to 12 of these pearly turnips make a pound. Look for them still attached to fresh greens.

The Japanese call these turnips kabura-type turnips, varieties include ‘Tokyo White’, ‘Tokyo Market’, and ‘Tokyo Cross’. In markets outside of Japan, all are usually simply called Tokyo turnips or white turnips.

Continue reading "Tokyo Turnip: Raw or Steamed" »

Baby Beets: Steamed, Baked, Pickled

Baby beets are beets harvested just as they have started to round out. Leave these beets until they mature and you can call them table beets.

Baby beets—just about the size of a ping-pong ball—have the most delicate taste and texture. Table beets—as big as your fist—still taste good, but don’t let them grow much larger as their flavor will be sacrificed to size.

Choose baby beets for the crudité platter or for pickling to use as a condiment or salad addition. Opt for table beets if you plan to grate the beets for relish or to add textural interest to a salad or salsa; they’ll be easier to handle.

When it comes to color golden or yellow beets are not as sweet and mild as red beets, but they won’t bleed onto your other ingredients, your work surface or hands.

You can capture the sweetness of baby beets by steaming or baking or pickling.

Continue reading "Baby Beets: Steamed, Baked, Pickled" »

Parsnip

Parsnips can be peeled, sliced, and sautéed or steamed like carrots. You can boil and mash them with butter and cream like potatoes.

Parsnips can be cut into chunks and added to soups or stews or baked in the oven with meat stock and butter. Roast parsnips with beef, pork or chicken.

Parsnips can be lightly cooked and eaten cold. You can parboil and fry parsnips like potatoes. Slice parsnips into rings, dip in batter, deep-fry and eat as fritters.

Grate parsnips into salads or add chopped and peeled to casseroles or soups.

The peak season for parsnips is fall and winter. The first frost of autumn will convert the parsnip’s starch to sugar and give it a sweet, hazelnut flavor. The parsnip is a hardy root vegetable that will continue to improve in flavor even as the weather turns to freezing.

Continue reading "Parsnip" »

Carrots

Tiny carrots steamed whole in butter; young carrots glazed in honey syrup; half-grown carrots served fresh from the garden: carrots need not be taken for granted.

Long an ingredient in stocks, soups, and stews or combined with other vegetables, carrots can stand alone as a flavorful treat.

The key to serving the best, tasty carrots are freshly harvested carrots not too small and not too large.

Carrots are a cool-season biennial grown as an annual. The peak season for carrots stretches from fall to late spring as long as the weather stays mild. Young, tender, spring carrots can be found at farmers’ markets now.

Continue reading "Carrots" »

Beets

beets

Beets have a sweet, earthy taste. If you bake or roast them in their skins, you can enjoy that flavor at its most intense.

Cook beets only until they just lose their rawness then combine them with meat, fish, grains, fruits, nuts, celeriac, fennel, or bitter greens.

Once tender, beets can be sliced or diced to use in salads, risottos, and vegetable side dishes.

Serve beets warm with a dressing of butter, lemon juice, and seasoning or dress them with orange juice topped with slivers of green onion or glazed with orange marmalade.

Continue reading "Beets" »

Parsley Root

Parsley root is a carrot-shaped, beige-white root whose flavor is somewhere between celeriac and carrot with hints of celery, turnip, and parsley leaf.

This winter and early spring vegetable can be steamed, boiled, puréed, or creamed. Use parsley root in braises, soups, stews, and vegetable mixes to add depth and aroma. It works particularly well in combination with other roots and tubers such as carrots, potatoes, turnips, and onions.

Parsley root is also called Hamburg parsley, Dutch parsley, and turnip-rooted parsley.

You will find parsley root at your farm market from August through April. The best supply of parsley root is in January. A touch of frost will improve its sweetness and flavor.

Continue reading "Parsley Root" »

Celeriac

Celeriac combines the sweet taste of the mildest celery with the light peppery zip of parsley.

Celeriac—which is also known as celery root, celery knobs, and turnip-rooted celery—can be used as a substitute for potatoes, but you can easily learn to like it for itself.

Celery root rémoulade is a standard first course or hors d’oeuvre in cafes in France. With rémoulade—a mayonnaise-based sauce, celeriac is sliced into fine julienne strips and served uncooked.

But celery root also can be boiled, braised, sautéed, and baked. Diced and boiled it will be ready in about ten minutes.

Continue reading "Celeriac" »

Rutabaga

Rutabaga is tasty served mashed with butter, cream, and spices.

Sauté rutabaga in butter with apples and brown sugar, or dice and add rutabaga to vegetable soups and stews.

The rutabaga can be treated like a turnip in the kitchen—boiled, steamed, mashed, roasted, baked, and fried. When it’s served it will taste just a bit spicier than a turnip.

Continue reading "Rutabaga" »

Turnip

Turnips braised in butter, parslied turnips, turnip and potato purée, glazed turnips, turnip casserole: these are just a few of the ways that the “French Chef” Julia Child suggested one might enjoy turnips.

Small young turnips are delicate and slightly sweet; larger more mature turnips can have the crisp flavor of an apple or offer the biting flavor of cabbage, mustard, or radish.

The peak season for turnips runs from October through March. Young turnips are common at farm markets in spring.

Continue reading "Turnip" »

Serving Radishes

Round, red radishes are often called spring radishes because that’s when they are grown and harvested. But radishes grow in mild, cool climates throughout the year.

Most radishes can be served raw or cooked. Here are some ideas for serving radishes:

Continue reading "Serving Radishes" »

< previous | 1 2 | next >

Never Miss a Garden Tip!

Just enter your email address and you will subscribe to "Harvest To Table" Web site updates via email for free. Make sure you confirm your subscription from the confirmation message you'll receive in your mailbox right away.