Don't Judge a Book By Its Cover: Blue Books and Rutabagas

I apologize for the tardiness of my post; I’ve been busy cooking up and serving something special: midyear exams for my students. And of course, once I’ve written the exams and my students have taken them, I find myself surrounded, for days, by piles of blue books to be read and graded.

My feelings about blue books are, shall we say, complicated. I love proctoring my exams. Witnessing my students bent earnestly over their work, consulting their books and notes in an effort to do their very best, warms me, and I find the intensity of their effort and the honesty of their engagement quite moving. Once I lug all the exams home, though, my elation fades. I feel less jazzed and more discouraged: the pile of books looks tall, and the time to read them all feels distressingly short. In fact, after a few hours of reading blue books, the light blue of their covers, rather than looking assertively fresh and full of possibilities, begins to appear more noncommittal, even insipid. And that little lamp logo—representing wisdom, I suppose—starts to look cartoonish.

But there are rewards. I never know what I’ll discover inside those covers. Yes, of course some exams will disappoint both me and their authors—maybe a student had an off day, or did not prepare sufficiently, or suffered a bad night’s sleep. But other exams will deliver flashes of brilliance, lovely turns of phrase, or inspired insight into a text. The pleasure is mine, as I read, and then again as I assign a well-earned grade that I know will bring a smile to student and parents.

And then there’s a final treat. Following in the footsteps of my esteemed colleague Eric, I am in the practice of including an optional little extra-credit exercise at the end of every exam. It’s supposed to be amusing for both me and my students, and usually asks them to think and write creatively, playfully, about things we’ve read. For example, I might ask them to write a description of themselves performing an everyday activity—brushing their teeth, say—in a Homeric voice. I call this exercise “dessert,” and I hope that my students enjoy it as much as I do. On the English 12 midyear, for which my students wrote about Milton’s Paradise Lost, one of the “dessert” options was to write a limerick or haiku inspired by Milton’s vast and erudite epic poem. The kids rose to the occasion. I laughed out loud when I read this limerick by one of my more sober students, R.:

There once was a Miltonic Bard

Who said, “You know, writing is hard!

A classical reference

Will make all the difference!”

And added them in by the yard.

And here's another, by L.:

There once was an angel who fell

From the sky, as old Milton will tell.

He was chained to a stake

On a big burning lake,

And he said, I don't kid you, "Oh hell!"

Such lovely flights of fanciful wit often bubble from even my most serious students, to my great delight. Those moments serve to remind me that you can’t always judge a book by its cover.

Which leads me to the rutabaga. More than a month ago, our friend Kathleen brought in some enormous, dirt-bedaubed rutabagas for my friend Bob and me; she’d received them from a local farmer. Let’s just say that those earthy beasties would not win any beauty contests, even among their own clan, the less than flashy root vegetables. They needed serious cleaning, and looked as if they were daring me to just try to cook and eat them. I toted the bag home and stuffed it in the pantry, where it remained, more or less forgotten for a good long while as I lived life and pursued other, more compelling cooking projects. But in the back of my mind, I kept mulling over the question Kathy asked as she handed me the bag: “What do you do with a rutabaga?”

I don’t know about you, but I haven’t spent much time forging meaningful relationships with rutabagas. I haven’t eaten them often, nor have I grown them. I categorize them in my mind with their cousins the turnips and their more distant relatives, such as the kohlrabi—which I think about, let alone cook with, next to never. Not that I have anything against root vegetables per se. Generally tasty, nutritious, and dependable, they are the seasonal veggies of choice these winter days. As evidenced by my last post, I feel unbridled affection for the potato. Sweet potatoes appear regularly on my table. I adore celery root, in soup or transformed into remoulade. Leeks are my go-to veggie for everything from soups to stir-fries to braises. The few times I’ve eaten rutabagas, though, they proved rather unremarkable, having endured a fate common to many a root vegetable: they’d been roasted, mashed, puréed, tossed with their rooty brethren, and then served as a side dish that languished next to the main dishes and the more glamorous leafy or brightly colored vegetables that had ripened in the air rather than deep underground. (Hello, red pepper! Come on in, baby bok choy! Where have you been all my life, you sexy royal-purple eggplant?!)

In short, rutabagas get little respect. Armed with the conviction that there are no bad vegetables, only inappropriate cooking methods, I set out to research the rutabaga. As it turns out, there was quite a lot to be learned. My favorite line came courtesy of the folks at Natural Solutions Magazine: “Best imagined as the lovechild of a cabbage and a turnip, the rutabaga is often overlooked because of its unappetizing name and history as peasant food." (http://www.naturalsolutionsmag.com) Rutabagas are exceptionally nutritious, containing more vitamin C and calcium than potatoes, beets, or turnips. They also contain folate, potassium, and a good bit of fiber. Wikipedia divulged even more: rutabagas are thought to have originated in Scandinavia or Russia and are the product of a cross between a wild strain of cabbage and the turnip. The first known printed reference to rutabagas is attributed to Swiss botanist Gaspard Bauhin in 1620; he noted that they grew wild in Sweden. They spread throughout Europe, eventually making their way to North America in the early 19th century. They are now widely cultivated here, especially in Oregon and Washington. Fun facts about rutabagas? They are apparently commonly carved into jack-o'-lanterns for the Halloween season throughout Britain and Ireland, and the International Rutabaga Curling Championship takes place annually at the Ithaca, NY, Farmers' Market on the last day of the market season. Who knew?

Despite the rutabaga’s many notable qualities, even the most ardent veggie lovers and advocates seem to resort to qualifications or euphemisms when discussing it. Even though she claims elsewhere to be a fan of rutabagas, Deborah Madison, a doyenne of vegetarian cooking and author of the comprehensive Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, lumps them in with turnips in VCfE. She suggests seeking out young specimens, whose greens also taste good. Then she adds, “However, storage turnips and rutabagas shouldn’t be overlooked, for they can be a valuable addition to the winter kitchen and their limitations are manageable.”

Those rutabagas from Kathleen? Their “limitations” seemed entirely unmanageable: they’d been in deep storage, and when I finally dug them out, they were even homelier than I remembered. And rather wizened and, um, flaccid. (I found out later that I should have kept them cool and damp, as our ancestors did in root cellars… as I could have, in my fridge.)

Looking at them, I realized that my prejudices against rutabagas are likely rooted (sorry) in their rather staid, dumpy appearance in addition to my past experiences of their flavor: simultaneously sweet and bitter—but often, especially in older, larger rutabagas, intensely bitter. I decided that to use the old rutabagas from Kathleen would not be giving the vegetable a fair shake. Clearly I needed some younger, smaller, more pert rutabagas for my experiments. The ones I bought at Whole Foods were, actually, a revelation—solid, chipper-looking and smallish, their exteriors a rather jaunty creamy white and purple, their inner flesh a creamier pale gold.

From right: youthful rutabagas alongside their rooty brethren, the celery root and the Macomber turnip (a Massachusetts native)

After reading and thinking about rutabagas much longer than I should have—particularly given the number of blue books still waiting to be read—I decided to cook two different rutabaga-based soups. Joe, my ever-accommodating sous chef and willing and able guinea pig, helped me prepare and sample them. We came up with a clear winner, a golden and velvety soup devised by Deborah Madison. What sets it apart is, I think, the use of pimentón de la Vera, Spanish smoked paprika—which imparts a shot of umamiful smokiness (the vegetarian equivalent of the flavor, maybe, of bacon or ham) to the soup’s already intriguing layers of sweet, salty, and bitter flavors. And Madison’s garnish, freshly made croutons dusted with the pimentón, adds a pleasing bit of crunch—and then chewiness, as the croutons soften. (Oddly, my son, Sam, says that the soup tastes like puréed pizza. He thinks that is a good thing.) Joe and I agreed that the runner-up, Peter Berley’s Rutabaga Soup with Sizzling Spice Oil, from his Modern Vegetarian Kitchen, shows promise. At the end of cooking Berley’s soup, you swirl in olive oil in which you have heated a number of freshly ground spices, much as you might with a dal. I will continue to tweak the recipe; if the results prove revelatory, I’ll let you know....

As I cooked with rutabagas, something interesting happened. I began to accept them on their own terms. Okay, frilly and delicate frisée they will never be, but perhaps that’s their strength. As Joe noted, there’s something subtle and mysterious in the flavor of this vegetable—probably exactly because it has spent its entire life underground.

So, what do you do with a rutabaga? Certainly don’t judge it by its cover. I recommend keeping an open mind and experimenting. (Mark Bittman, in his How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, offers an interesting suggestion that deviates from the usual, predictable preparations: a flat omelet using diced rutabaga to impart “a nice, sweet, cabbagey flavor.”) Whatever you end up making, know that the rather homely but honest vegetable you are eating is good for you and can taste mighty fine—added to your usual mashes and purées, slipped into stews and roasted dishes, and, most definitely, featuring as the star of its own special soup.

Rutabaga and Leek Chowder with Crisp Smoky Croutons

Adapted from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen

The Soup

1 ½ lbs rutabagas

2 to 3 T butter

Hefty pinch of dried thyme or a couple of sizable sprigs of fresh thyme

1 bay leaf

2 medium leeks, chopped (1 to 2 c)

One ¼-lb potato, peeled and cut into 1-in cubes

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

6 c vegetable stock

To Finish

2 T butter

1 c 1-in bread chunks

½ t Spanish smoked paprika (pimentón de la Vera)

1. Thickly peel the rutabagas, getting under the epidermis, quarter them lengthwise, then slice crosswise about 3/8 in thick.

2. Melt the butter in a wide soup pot with the thyme and bay leaf. Let it brown a little, then add the leeks. Give a stir and cook over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, then add the rutabagas and potato. Toss in a t of salt and cook, partially covered, until everything has wilted down, 5 minutes or so. Add the stock, bring to a boil lower the heat, and simmer, covered, until the rutabagas are tender but not mushy—you’ll want some texture—20 to 25 minutes.

3. Purée half the vegetables and return them to the pot. Or purée the whole batch for a completely smooth soup. (We puréed it with an immersible blender until it was almost perfectly smooth.) Taste for salt, adjusting if necessary, and season with pepper.

4. Melt the remaining butter in a small skillet over medium-high heat. Add the bread chunks, toss them in the butter, then reduce the heat and cook until crisp and golden, after 5 to 8 minutes. Add the smoked paprika, toss the croutons, and then turn off the heat. Serve the soup with croutons in each bowl and a delicate sprinkling of extra paprika over the top.

Makes 6 to 7 cups.

DESSERT:

Write a limerick inspired by the rutabaga. (Unfinished sample below.) Reply to Comments!

There once was a root, rutabaga,

Whose bitterness threatened to plague ya,

But if you cooked it up well,

Avec deux fleurs de sel,

____________________________.