Rutabaga lovers listen up. For years, at rutabaga prep time, this weakling cook delegated the daunting task of paring and chopping the rutabaga to others. This lovely vegetable, underappreciated by many folk, is tough to cut up leading rutabaga connoisseurs to plan and plot new strategies.
There’s the microwave partially method… It doesn’t work. There’s the pound on cleaver with hammer to divide method…Sort of crude and the cleaver gets stuck. Then there’s the drop whole in boiling water to soften first method, which promotes wax floating everywhere. Some methods work some of the time, but with a rutabaga you never know what you’re gonna get. You can’t tell by looking, squeezing, or smelling it, how hard it is and how sweet it will be.
If you know something I don’t, know please clue me in.Christmas morning, after opening presents, sampling chocolates, cooking the traditional sausage and refried beans meal and trying out a few gadgets, we got an early start on prep for the main Christmas feast. As usual, I determined that the potatoes and rutabaga would taste best if someone else did the chopping and paring. The rutabagas, two ugly little orbs, were waiting. If they were really hard as I knew they could be, the son-unit should put some male brawn into the job.
“Here, peel first, then chop it into one-inch squares” I directed, gesturing to the kitchen knife selection.
He disappeared into his bedroom where he has god-knows-what spilling out of muddy bags from his recent return from Hispaniola.
I feared he might be ducking the job but he soon returned bearing his trusty 200-peso machete. It’d been his constant companion and multi-task tool for the past 27 month-- So of course he brought it back. Who knows what he might run into back in Michigan!
He quickly pared off the waxy skin and started chopping. He hacked his way efficiently through those two baggies in no time at all. It was better than a Ginsu knife.
My Christmas shopping list for next year just got very simple; Machetes for everyone!
p.s. The final product, mashed rutabaga with a pat of butter, was sweet and juicy.
ReplyDeleteYou are a hoot! Thanks for the laughs and smiles :)
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