Before we get into this post, I just want to give a shout out to Food52 (no relation) for this recipe and that you should check out their site. They always have good articles on figuring out new and old things and make you feel like something basic like a boiled egg is a culinary feat.
This. Was. Delicious.
Apples, onions and a rutabaga somehow make this dish feel whole and I want to make it again soon. I mentioned in the mashed rutabaga post about how sweet it was, and the apples in this really took that ball and ran with it. It may have helped ever so slightly that there was brown sugar involved in the making of this dish, but it didn’t overpower anything which is just how I like it.
There is nothing more glorious of a smell to me than onions cooking. Nobody ever thinks to themselves, “hey, I could really go for an onion about now,” and then proceeds to chop and cook one up. My grandfather would eat green onions dipped in salt but that is way different than a bulb just by itself. Onions are a great team player that way in that they will work with just about anything you give them and really add something special to a dish. They just get a bad rap for the whole making you cry thing.
This isn’t about onions though, the rutabaga is the star here. I didn’t get a chance to mention last time about chopping a rutabaga, but it is fairly tough to do so. I didn’t expect it, and I dare say it is on par with trying to shred a celery root.
I don’t know why it gave so much resistance, but here we are trying to just cut it in half. Could have been the knife I was using though in retrospect but it was a difficult task worthy of mentioning.
I need to give a shout out to the apples here too, I rarely cook with apples. Whenever I buy a bag of apples they always end up as my snack on the go kind of thing. The only time I think of cooking with apples is putting them in a pie or making cinnamon baked apples which are heavenly. Onions and apples might just be my new favorite combination at the moment.
The plate is a mess but this wasn’t a fancy, pinkies out dish in my opinion. When you’re throwing onions around, you are throwing fanciness out the window. These were so good I took it for lunch the next day which is kind of rare with some of these. The rutabaga texture, not mashed, was creamy when you bite into it and still had that sweet taste hit first with a lingering turnip aftertaste. Standing up there with some apples mixed in was just fantastic. If you are going to eat a rutabaga, make sure you have apples and onions in your cart as well so you can try this as well.
Try 52 