her able hands

Have you ever tasted pickled turnips and felt the sweet explosion of turnipy goodness waking your taste buds up from a deep slumber? The first time I had them was last year at a local Middle Eastern restaurant. An insert stuck into the menu notified customers that the wrap style sandwiches now also contained pickles and turnips but just say the word if you think pickles are nothing more than cucumber or some other smelly vegetable steeped in evil. OK, they didn’t say it quite like that, just that you can decline the pickled bits if you so desire.

But you and I both know people who shudder visibly at the thought of pickles. S, the guitarist in the lunchtime band thinks pickles are a weapon of mass destruction. Lunch with him on Friday is a hoot because he places his order and then pauses and we all wait. Conversation always stops when he’s ordering. He always turns back to his menu for a moment, studying it as if he’s going to maybe order a side of something (fried pickles perchance?)*, and then looks up at the waitress as if something has just occurred to him and says “Oh yeah, and No. Pickles. I don’t want any pickles touching anything on my plate.” It doesn’t matter how many times I hear this routine, it’s always funny. I love S even though he won’t eat at this particular restaurant and I’m so done with fish sandwiches, Iceberg lettuce salads and cheeseburgers at chain restaurants. I think I may have to ditch the gang and hit Aladdin’s tomorrow (warning: flash on their site).

Aaaanyway, that day I hadn’t made up my mind between the grilled tuna on salad and the grilled tuna and salad wrap. The pickles clinched the deal and boy-howdy, they did not disappoint. Tiny gherkin pickles and sticks of bright pink pickled turnip in every bite. Not a ton of them, just enough to give each bite a spicy-sweet tang and a crunchiness that you just can’t get from lettuce. Heavenly. And I’ve been fantasizing about making my own pickled turnips ever since.

I actually wanted to do it when I first read Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats

So a few years later—you know how that goes, right? How three years can go by and your to-do list has only grown longer? Yeah, I thought so. I used to believe I was the only overwhelmed person on the planet who couldn’t reach any of her goals, but then along came the internet and I found out that we’re mostly all like that and the people closest to me were just perpetuating the lie of success and efficiency. Ha! Ha-hah! Heh. I’m kidding.

OK, are you still with me? It’s three years later and I’m just barely out the other side of the worst stomach flu of my life (people, the things I didn’t tell you…except for you and my poor mother and sister. And a couple of co-workers. I told all of you and I’m really, really sorry. Truly. But you know it was funny, too.) I tell you, extreme gastric distress made me crave the pickled turnips in the worst way. I had snapped up some locally grown turnips at the farm stand right before Thanksgiving and dumped them in the bottom drawer of the fridge and they didn’t look too bad, just a little yellowed around the edges. I doubled the recipe I found at astray.com, after comparing and constrasting about twenty others. I settled on this one because I liked the addition of celery leaves and the smaller amount of salt.

Pickled Turnips
Yield: 1 pint

* 1 large beet
* 4 small turnips or 3 medium size turnips
* 3-5 garlic cloves, peeled and sliced (I used 2 cloves per jar because my belly wasn’t in the mood for garlic. But I knew it would be later, so I kept some in.)
* Young celery leaves (no measurement on the recipe. I used about 3 tablespoons, very barely chopped.)
* 1/2 cup each white vinegar and water
* 1 tablespoon coarse salt (I used Kosher.)

Boil beet in water until tender and peel, cool, slice and set aside. Drop turnips into boiling beet water for 2 to 3 minutes, take out and peel. Cut into French-fry size sticks.

Sterilize 1 pint wide-mouth jar, layer turnips, beets, a few slices of garlic and celery leaves.

Combine water, vinegar and salt and bring to a boil, making sure salt dissolves. Fill jar with vinegar mixture (I left about a half inch head), seal and store in a warm place for ten days. (I put plastic wrap over the jar before I put the lid on and also set the jars in plastic containers in case they leak. I hear that can happen with fermenting.)

After opening, store in the refrigerator. These get better the longer they sit - which the recipe promises seldom happens, which is why I doubled it.

If you’re interested in reading about the benefits of eating fermented foods, here’s a pretty comprehensive article from Natural Health written by Jill Neimark.

If these come out as good as I expect them to, then I’m going to try some of the lacto-fermentation recipes from Nourishing Traditions. Eight days left, people. Any suggestions for what to try the turnips with first?

* Fried pickles are apparently a local delicacy. I have yet to try them because I’m told that I need to wait and have them at a specific diner in Akron whose name I can’t recall, but I’m promised that they’re worth the drive. I’m skeptical and people, I love me some pickles. But fried? I don’t know. It seems so Ohio State Fair Cuisine. Followed by a fried Snickers Bar. Some things really are just wrong. That right there is definitely one, and possibly two of them in the same meal. Pass the TUMSâ„¢.

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