An Ode to the Underground Vegetables

Good morning, friends. It’s Saturday, dark outside and not too early. The sky is grey, Winter having arrived last night, just in time for my weekly trip to market. My writing room, The Condensery is cold. I’ve had a word with the radiator and settled in with a cup of jasmine tee to think about the wonders of root vegetables. Tis the season.

Recently, I made Creamy Curried Lentil Soup1 and another night a pot filled with Beef Rouladen neither of which would have been any good at all without a colorful variety of underground vegetables.

Of which we sing when singing the wonders of underground veggies

There are the underground vegetables the ones which are the roots of plants. They are the ones with tails at one end Even though often, we traditionally only eat the roots, an old farmer at market once told me that of the vegetables whose roots we enjoy, we can eat also the greens. Meanwhile I am happy to see recipes for radish and carrot greens or ginger leaves making the rounds.

Your root vegetables are the likes of carrots, radishes, celerac (celery root), parsnips (parsley root), turnips, onions. The potato is not a root vegetable but it does grow underground and we do love them. I’m giving them a pass here so they can join the party. What’s a party without a potato?? 2

And why are they so great?

Lets start with how they keep forever in the fridge. It ustabee that, are you ready for this? Root vegetables were kept in boxes of dirt or sand in the root cellar which may or may not have been located underneath the house.3

Root veggies have a lot of fiber that holds up well to cooking and mashing. And butter, too. Mashed root veggies served in a bowl with a pat of melting butter in the middle are a thing of beauty and great kindness to your fellow dining companions. This will feed your body, your microbiome, and your Soul.

If you add root veggies to your potatoes for cooking and mashing together, you reduce the calories a bit, double the number of vegetables in your mash and increase the vitamin count. Add a little more liquid and let your leftovers slip on into creamy soup territory. That’s a fine place to be and where I am going tonight for dinner.

How do you make mashed root vegetables (aka vegetable purée)?

Easy peasy. Cut them up small-ish and put them in a pot with some fat4. Sautee on medium heat until you start to see some browning.5 Add barely enough liquid to cover the veggies 6 and simmer a few minutes until they are tender and done. Then, with a potato masher or an immersion blender (as long as there are no potatoes in that pot), mash them to a thick pulpy mush. Add salt and pepper to taste and you are finished with your dinner, your side dish, or your ingredient.

What can you use it for?

Dinner: make soup by thinning out the final product with more stock and a dash of cream. Sprinkle fresh herbs and some croutons or sliced green onion on top Side dish added to mashed potatoes or instead of. Ingredient: Think about it in light of our Coffee Cake Adaptable. Keep it moist and make it healthy. We’ll get into this more later.

How long can you keep it?

At least a week, probably two in the fridge, six months in the freezer.

You know this did not turn out to be and Ode, don’t you?

I do. Except, that is sort-of is.

Footnotes

  1. Need a recipe, please Maus… ↩

  2. Note that the potato is not a root vegetable and the wisdom of the intenet seems to be split on whether or not you can or even should eat them. I don’t. If this changes, I’ll let you know. ↩

  3. Think Wizard of Oz. Dorothy’s Aunt took shelter in the root cellar. Dorothy, did not and went looking for Toto instead and fictional history was written. ↩

  4. Call it a tablespoon and you choose the fat based on what you have and what you like. I typically use butter or olive oil if my end goal is a vegetable soup and use [[animal fats]] (bacon, pork, chicken or even goose fat (rendered at Christmas and stored in the fridge/freezer) if the purée is intended to thicken a meaty soup or gravy. ↩

  5. Call it 5 minutes. ↩

  6. Liquid: water, stock, milk (thin it down to 50/50 milk to water or stock). ↩