the enormous turnip

February 11, 2003


What is the difference between two pounds of turnips and a two pound turnip?

A two pound turnip is about the size of a softball. A two pound turnip is harder than a hardball. A two pound turnip is not divisible into 1 inch cubes. It just isn't.

It's not like I went looking for a two pound turnip. No indeed. I was just looking for two pounds of turnips to make into curried turnips. This should have been easy.

The first market I try has plenty of turnips but no scale. Having no scale at home and treating all cooking like chemistry experiments, I decide I cannot curry the turnips if I do not know how much they weigh. Not having bought turnips in a long time, I am at a loss as to a guesstimate.

The second market I go to has no turnips. It's root vegetable season. How can a market have no turnips? This is winter. Turnips are a winter vegetable. What's up with that?

The third market has a scale in the produce department. They have turnips, though only a few. The turnips are gigantic. They resemble the enormous turnip from that Russian folk tale where the farmer has to recruit more and more help to pull and pull and pull to get the turnip out of the ground. I pick through them and find one that weighs exactly two pounds. Shows you how often I cook turnips, 'cause I am clueless that a two pound turnip is not at all the same thing as two pounds of turnips.

I chop an onion. I mix the spices. I peel the turnip. Next step is dice the turnip(s) into 1 inch cubes. I pick up the knife and attempt to slice the turnip in half. Nothing happens. Am I trying to slice a softball?

I stab harder and penetrate the surface but am only able to slice about an inch before the knife won't move further. OK, I can't cut it in half.

How about if I start cutting slices off the end? I stick the knife into the turnip and lean hard on the handle. Three quarters of the knife blade flies across the kitchen, bounces off the refrigerator, and lands on the stove top. Fortunately neither Wilbur nor I are injured. I stand there holding the knife handle, staring at it in wonderment.

Where have I put the Sawz-all? Never mind. I rummage through the kitchen drawers. One knife is dull. Duller than dull. Another one bends when I try it on the turnip. Finally in the bottom of the drawer I find this knife I haven't used in ages. It's a multipurpose knife with different serration on each side of the blade and a two pronged point at the end. One of the serrated sides looks remarkably like a hacksaw blade.

I takes about a half hour to saw the turnip into irregular pieces not even close to cubes let alone 1 inch cubes. I'm hungry. The onions and spices and yogurt are sautéed and waiting in the skillet. I dump the turnip fragments into the skillet, stir them 'til the curry mixture coats them, then cover the skillet and cook for the recommended 30 minutes.

Thirty minutes later, the turnip fragments are not yet tender. I add a tablespoon of water to moisten them and cook for another 10 minutes. The pieces closest to the center seem to be tender and I'm really really hungry by now. I can't wait any more. I serve myself a plateful of turnip fragments. Some of them are curried and delicious. Most of them are crunchy. Turnips are not supposed to be crunchy. Obviously, I should have used smaller fragments, like the 1 inch cubes called for in the recipe. But how was I supposed to do that?

Nancy looks up turnips in James Beard's American Cooking. It says small, young turnips are tender and the cook should use those. I check dozens of recipe web sites and discover variations on this recipe that call for "6 small turnips, about 2 pounds." Aha! Two pounds of turnips is not the same as a two pound turnip.

Today's Reading
The Measure of All Things by Ken Alder, Winter World by Bernd Heinrich

This Year's Reading
2003 Book List


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Copyright © 2003, Janet I. Egan