Here's my experience: My mother didn't cook with rutabagas. My first encounter was as an adult in my 20's, and I recall not being impressed. Many years later I was invited to dinner at the home of a sweet but unimaginative English cook, and had some pretty flavorless boiled and mashed rutabaga. Awful. Then just a few years ago I had lunch at The London Plane in Seattle, a wonderfully sophisticated-earthy restaurant and sister of the more famous Sitka and Spruce: neither's vegetarian, but the emphasis is more on on vegetables than meat. One of the dishes I ordered was rutabaga, unpeeled, sliced in crescents and roasted with tomatoes, which I loved. In the three years since, spurred by that experience I actually bought a rutabaga which rotted in my fridge before I used it. Thinking ahead to cooling fall temps, last week I bought another.
Returning from a shopping day in Seattle yesterday with a bottle of Donnhoff dry reisling and a pair of organic pork chops, it occurred to me that roasted rutabaga might be the perfect sidekick for those chops, simply grilled, and a light sauce--more of a douse, really--of a 1:1 blend of maple syrup and good sherry vinegar. Going in, I knew that this simple vinaigrette is one of the best things that can happen to a pork chop, but on those sweet and earthy chunks of diced rutabaga? The threesome was pure magic. Garnished with a few sugar snap peas? The perfect meal for a warm sunny Autumn day.
I also discovered that I like it raw.
A quick glance online revealed a few interesting things: rutabagas aren't an original product of nature, they were created in the late 1800's by crossing turnips with cabbage, which sounds a bit like breeding a shitzhu to a octopus to my naive ear, but okay. And they're rich in anti-oxidants.
Do you like them? If so, how do you prepare them?