The day after our expedition to the Brattleboro Farmers Market, I cooked up the turnips so we could compare them. Annette had some of the famous Eastham turnip already cooked in her freezer, so she brought that down.
Here's the roster and the results:
- Gilfeather Turnip, a Vermont variety, is the big knobby guy in the photo. I cut it into batons and steamed them until tender, then I mashed half and served the remaining batons plain so we would know the flavor before seasoning. It was delicate and it responded well to butter, salt and pepper.
- Scarlet Turnip, very cute, tasty raw and sliced thin, but lost all flavor when steamed whole.
- The long green guy at the top of the photo is a mystery. The farmer couldn't tell me anything about it except that it's not a Daikon. It was a little sharp raw, but lovely when sliced into thin discs and steamed.
- Eastham Turnip, the queen of Cape Cod, had been cooked and mashed previously, and frozen then reheated. After all that, we all declared it the winner of the Turnip Challenge!
(until a new contender comes on the scene...)
When we were finished, I took the leftover batons and discs and put them in an apple cider vinaigrette. They were excellent with a burger made from ground Dexter beef that we got at the same market.
A note about terminology: We were tasting turnips. The big purple-topped yellow things that my family and Lorna calls turnips are really rutabagas, a different vegetable that is a little outside the class of the local turnips we tasted.