The vegetable has a number of names - from Wikipedia:
Rutabaga (/ˌruːtəˈbeɪɡə/; North American English) or swede (British English and some Commonwealth English) is a root vegetable, a form of Brassica napus (which also includes rapeseed). Other names include Swedish turnip, neep (Scots), and turnip (Scottish and Canadian English, Irish English, Cornish English and Manx English, as well as some dialects of English in Northern England and Australian English). However, elsewhere, the name turnip usually refers to the related white turnip.
English people simply contract ‘Swedish turnip’ from the other end than Scots do.
So I gather. It's not a word we use. I'm not sure we know how to pronounce it.
ROO-tuh-BAY-guh, or ROO-duh-BAY-guh
Just as “rutabaga” isn’t used in the UK, we only use “Swede” to mean “person from Sweden.” Every time a Shipmate uses “Swede” to refer to food, I have to look it up again to remember which food it is. Maybe one day I’ll figure out a tip for remembering it.
Interestingly, the Online Etymology Dictionary tells me that “rutabaga” comes “from Swedish dialectal (West Götland) rotabagge, from rot "root" (from PIE root *wrād- "branch, root") + bagge "bag"
Turnip (big orange thing, so probably = swede) was a common vegetable in my childhood. Mother would boil it, mashed it and fry it up with onion - a practice I follow to this day. Though I have to say we only ever have it with tatties and haggis.
The other vegetables were carrots and parsnips - sliced, boiled and mixed. Only much later I discovered that parsnips can be roasted, and don't have to taste of wet cardboard.
Cabbage - boiled for at least half an hour.
Seasonal, and again always in combination, peas and broad beans. Boiled, of course.
And potatoes. Always potatoes. Not a dinner without potatoes.
Turnip (big orange thing, so probably = swede) was a common vegetable in my childhood. Mother would boil it, mashed it and fry it up with onion - a practice I follow to this day. Though I have to say we only ever have it with tatties and haggis.
The other vegetables were carrots and parsnips - sliced, boiled and mixed. Only much later I discovered that parsnips can be roasted, and don't have to taste of wet cardboard.
Cabbage - boiled for at least half an hour.
Seasonal, and again always in combination, peas and broad beans. Boiled, of course.
And potatoes. Always potatoes. Not a dinner without potatoes.
Apart from the first paragraph, that sounds like my youth in the 1970s! And the Brits deride "foreign muck"...
Firenze has just described my mother’s cooking, though with her being a Lancashire lass the potatoes and carrots were usually with onions in a hot pot (boiled on the hob, not the fancy layered and baked dishes that weirdly appear to be ‘traditional Lancashire hot pot’ in online recipes).
When I gew up in the south of England the small white roots were called swedes and that large orange ones were called turnips (though that might have just been my Mum.) Now that I live in the north I have had to learn that the opposite is the case.
I once tried tripe. Never again. The French put tripe into foul smelling and tasting sausages called andouillettes. We bought some on a family holiday. The stench as they were cooking was so bad and lavatorial that our three young children howled with laughter. They hit the bin, and we had to open all the doors and windows of the cottage we were staying in.
Tripe was also a feature of my childhood; my father loved it and had been known to drive from home in Luton to Manchester to buy some as you ‘can’t get decent tripe down south’. My mother boiled it with onions and served it with vinegar, and it was foul. The cat liked it though.
The difficulty with Innards is finding a butcher who stocks them. My local one sometimes has a small stock of kidneys, ditto lamb's liver, but never tripe, or sweetbreads or heart. Things where the constituents are lost sight of - haggis, black pudding, sausages - are readily available. Tongue or brawn only as processed meats - the latter I think I only see in Polish shops.
The food of the poor, unless it becomes modish like lamb shanks, has largely disappeared.
‘Poor’ food becoming fashionable is a such an odd phenomenon. The organic delivery company which brings my weekly shop has been known to obtain tongue, and pig and beef cheeks. Mr Heavenly has made pressed tongue as part of a Boxing Day spread and cheek is delicious. But cheeks are now difficult to get hold of from them, presumably because they are popular in high end restaurants. There is a waiting list for delivery of chicken hearts; I get a small pot once a month.
I like shin beef but I object to paying more for it than plain old diced beef. When it requires a diamond saw blade to cut it and need 8 hours to stew I feel like I should be paying a little less.
Our local Morrisons stocks kidneys, heart and liver, and beef cheek and ox tail, all of which we eat. But they are no longer cheap - except for pigs kidneys (for steak and kidney and pigs liver (for liver, bacon and onions.) Beef cheek makes superb casseroles. Ox tail is stupidly expensive.
Tripe is used in a Mexican soup here in California and is very tasty. It is said to be beneficial for hangovers, so many Mexican restaurants serve it as a special on weekends. You can buy the tripe all ready cleaned and prepared for cooking in some stores.
The secret is in the proportion of neep to tattie: 1:2 is about right, then mash them together with an industrial quantity of butter and a generous seasoning of salt and black pepper, and you have clapshot, which is the best possible accompaniment to haggis. 🙂🏴
After several attempts over the years, I am now declaring I do not like raw kale. Nope, not at all. Cooked, it is fine, but raw, no. It is the texture more than the taste. There are very few things I won't eat, but I am adding kale to the list. Oh, I'll eat it if someone serves it, but I'm not fixing it for myself.
I have yet to eat kale with any kind of pleasure. When I've tried it seemed very coarse, like eating thistles.
I understand (thanks to TV chefs) that to eat raw kale one should douse it in a salad dressing and massage it into submission.
Don't think I could be bothered.
You can put raw kale in a smoothie. I'm not saying you should but you can. It was the only way my stepson could consume it when he was on a health drive (being someone who generally doesn't eat vegetables)
Some time ago I was making a (very large) spinach pie and realised that the bunch of spinach (aka silverbeet) was insufficient. At that time I had kale growing in the yard so shredded some, wilted it with the spinach and the result was very satisfactory. Didn’t tell the tribe but they ate it happily.
Not the same animal.
Silverbeet is another name for (Swiss)chard, and is a member of the beetroot family.
Spinach is of the amaranth family.
Each can be cooked and eaten in the same manner as the other.
I have always distinguished silverbeet from spinach, and I will check at the next farmer's market whether they are named as such or whether I am projecting my English upbringing into Australia.
I much prefer spinach to silverbeet for making spanokopita. (And despite what the recipe's say, there is no need to wilt the spinach (or baby spinach) before putting it into the filo pastry "casing".
Agree re baby( English😜) spinach leaves ( have used-shock! horrors!) for spinach pie when no better alternative (such extravagance!) available at Coles or Woolies ( no local farmers’ market, alas).
Popeye spinach is certainly more of a faff to use, what with trimming all the leaves off the ribs….I was amused to note that this is the preferred greenery of most Greeks and Greek Aussies that I have encountered.
My Beloved makes for us a salad, every night of the year. Leafy greens are some combination of spinach, kale, chard, and beet greens. Crunchy things are from the brassica family, with carrots, radishes, celery and peppers interspersed.
I have persuaded him to run the entire thing through the food processor to a "coleslaw" consistency, otherwise I would gag on this combination.
Still the only thing that makes it palatable is the balsamic vinaigrette I concocted to balance out the strong bitterness of the leaves and crudites. They need a strong sour/salt/sweet/umami to balance the bitterness.
When I lived in the very north of Sutherland it was kale or frozen peas - nothing else green ever! Scottish kale can take anything the weather throws at it. Co-incidence maybe but both my partners parents lived into their late nineties.
I had understood that kale was winter feed for cows. Why any human would want to consume it I can't imagine.
I have always understood that oats are horse feed, and yet, people eat the stuff…..
There's a bunch of things considered in only good for animals in one country and eaten regularly in another; in the case of oats this seems to be as much about geographic and/or class snobbery as anything else.
Good old Sam Johnson certainly nailed it re the oats! Parsnips are an expensive delicacy in these parts: what about in Blighty?
As for pumpkin ( be it butternut, Queensland blue or Jap) here in Oz it an integral part of the “baked dinner”. I recall the shock of some North American guests when they were presented with same along with the leg of lamb. I was told that it was chiefly fed to livestock, so there you go. Then again, pumpkin pie as a dessert is ( thankfully) unknown in Oz. You don’t see those big orange pumpkins used for Jacko’lanterns in the shops here.
Butternut is quite widely available, but I'm not sure it's really caught on. I find it a bugger to peel. If I want some sort of sweetish stodge in soup or a traybake, sweet potato is a lot easier.
My favourite squash by far is red kuri squash (known as potimarron in France). It's main selling point is that the skin is edible so you don't need to bugger about peeling it. It's very widely available here, and I'm mystified why it hasn't caught on in other countries.
As for pumpkin ( be it butternut, Queensland blue or Jap) here in Oz it an integral part of the “baked dinner”. I recall the shock of some North American guests when they were presented with same along with the leg of lamb. I was told that it was chiefly fed to livestock, so there you go.
That those North Americans would say that sounds really odd to me. Aside from pumpkin pie, dishes like pumpkin soup, roasted pumpkin, mashed pumpkin and pumpkin bread are all popular in the States, mainly in fall and winter. (I can’t stand pumpkin in any form, but lots of people love it.)
That said, if I understand correctly what you mean by “butternut,” that would be called squash, not pumpkin, here. Pumpkin, while a kind of squash, is rarely referred to as “squash” here; and the name “pumpkin” is generally used only for the orange (usually) round kind of squash associated here with Halloween and Thanksgiving.
Butternut is quite widely available, but I'm not sure it's really caught on. I find it a bugger to peel.
My wife cooks it regularly—for herself, as I’m afraid I don’t really like it either. Truth be told, other than crookneck/yellow squash and zucchini/courgette (which I don’t love but don’t mind), I really don’t like any kind of squash.
Anyway, my wife never peels butternut squash. She cuts it in half lengthwise, puts the halves in a dish flat sides down and roasts it, then scoops the cooked flesh out.
I cut butternut squash into half-moon slices, skin on, and roast them. I eat the skins, Mr RoS cuts it off.
I don't bother separating the stalks and leaves of chard, either, just roll them up and slice across finely (like making a chiffonade of lettuce).
Yep, butternut in Oz=pumpkin and curiously in my young days pumpkin soup was not even sold in cans: I first recall seeing it on the supermarket shelf until the 1980s.
Canned pumpkin ( for pie filling) has never caught on, although you’d occasionally see it on the “American exotic” shelf along with corn syrup in the foodhall at David Jones ( upmarket department store)
Of course I forgot to mention the unspeakable pumpkin scones beloved of the late Flo Bjelke-Petersen ( wife of a long dead and utterly vile premier of Queensland)…
I love courgettes, griddled, stir-fried or roasted. I also grate them to add to sauces. Last night I put them into mini soufflés. As noted, the yellow ones are even better.
Re: kale, I like it in the Indian chaat dish with yoghurt, pomegranate and chicken peas. But generally it is hard work to eat and best finely shredded. I also like butternut squash but my lack of height and strength means I find chopping it difficult, even just in half.
I don’t like chard, it tastes earthy.
Bee Wilson has a recipe for oven-baked courgette/potato/onion fritters. They're very nice, but the sheer amount of grating plus squeezing to get the water out makes them IMO way too labour intensive.
Can't recall when I last saw yellow courgettes in the shops. Usually I buy the packs of baby ones.
Courgettes are fairly dismal unless grilled (and even then...) or stir-fried with (just a little) caster sugar and Chinkiang vinegar.
My go-to is to slice them into medallions, spray them with a little olive oil, sprinkle with a little pepper and maybe a little oregano or herbes de Provence, top with shredded Parmesan or Parmigiano Reggiano and then roast.
Courgettes are indeed dismal on their own. They need other, stronger flavours. I have several good and contrasting recipes:
- Nigel Slater’s courgette and Lancashire cheese crumble (probably available online, but it’s from a long time ago, so can add it here if anyone wants it)
- Paula’s courgette salad. Slice courgettes thinly, stir fry briefly and add (while still hot) to a small dish containing olive oil and a clove or two of garlic (raw, peeled and sliced - do not crush or fry). The oil should be sufficient to coat the courgettes generously and infuse them with the garlic. After at least an hour, remove the garlic and add a generous amount of lemon juice, and chopped mint or parsley if you want. Delicious with salmon and new potatoes.
- Rachel’s courgettes and chillies. Slice and stir fry a large courgette, add a chopped green chilli and a generous spoonful of turmeric, then either coconut milk or some creamed coconut and water. Good as a mild side dish with a stronger curry.
- Ratatouille, obviously.
There are probably more but those are my main ones.
We have a device that turns courgettes into slender strands like spaghetti. Very lightly sauteed it is a good substitue for pasta, and takes well to a bolognaise/meat and tomato sauce. The device also separates out the core, which is the worst part of the vegetable.
Comments
It's actually swede, despite "neep" coming from "turnip". Scots get them confused.
So I gather. It's not a word we use. I'm not sure we know how to pronounce it.
Just as “rutabaga” isn’t used in the UK, we only use “Swede” to mean “person from Sweden.” Every time a Shipmate uses “Swede” to refer to food, I have to look it up again to remember which food it is. Maybe one day I’ll figure out a tip for remembering it.
Interestingly, the Online Etymology Dictionary tells me that “rutabaga” comes “from Swedish dialectal (West Götland) rotabagge, from rot "root" (from PIE root *wrād- "branch, root") + bagge "bag"
The other vegetables were carrots and parsnips - sliced, boiled and mixed. Only much later I discovered that parsnips can be roasted, and don't have to taste of wet cardboard.
Cabbage - boiled for at least half an hour.
Seasonal, and again always in combination, peas and broad beans. Boiled, of course.
And potatoes. Always potatoes. Not a dinner without potatoes.
Apart from the first paragraph, that sounds like my youth in the 1970s! And the Brits deride "foreign muck"...
I once tried tripe. Never again. The French put tripe into foul smelling and tasting sausages called andouillettes. We bought some on a family holiday. The stench as they were cooking was so bad and lavatorial that our three young children howled with laughter. They hit the bin, and we had to open all the doors and windows of the cottage we were staying in.
The food of the poor, unless it becomes modish like lamb shanks, has largely disappeared.
The secret is in the proportion of neep to tattie: 1:2 is about right, then mash them together with an industrial quantity of butter and a generous seasoning of salt and black pepper, and you have clapshot, which is the best possible accompaniment to haggis. 🙂🏴
I understand (thanks to TV chefs) that to eat raw kale one should douse it in a salad dressing and massage it into submission.
Don't think I could be bothered.
You can put raw kale in a smoothie. I'm not saying you should but you can. It was the only way my stepson could consume it when he was on a health drive (being someone who generally doesn't eat vegetables)
Silverbeet is another name for (Swiss)chard, and is a member of the beetroot family.
Spinach is of the amaranth family.
Each can be cooked and eaten in the same manner as the other.
Thanks but in Oz silverbeet=spinach( think Popeye the Sailor Man) and spinach=“ English spinach”.
You say potaytos, and I say potahtos, etc….
I much prefer spinach to silverbeet for making spanokopita. (And despite what the recipe's say, there is no need to wilt the spinach (or baby spinach) before putting it into the filo pastry "casing".
Popeye spinach is certainly more of a faff to use, what with trimming all the leaves off the ribs….I was amused to note that this is the preferred greenery of most Greeks and Greek Aussies that I have encountered.
I have persuaded him to run the entire thing through the food processor to a "coleslaw" consistency, otherwise I would gag on this combination.
Still the only thing that makes it palatable is the balsamic vinaigrette I concocted to balance out the strong bitterness of the leaves and crudites. They need a strong sour/salt/sweet/umami to balance the bitterness.
AFF
I have always understood that oats are horse feed, and yet, people eat the stuff…..
Oats are very useful ingredients but I've never been able to stomach, say, porridge. Parkin, flapjack, haggis etc do however make good use of oats.
There's a bunch of things considered in only good for animals in one country and eaten regularly in another; in the case of oats this seems to be as much about geographic and/or class snobbery as anything else.
Parsnips are another example.
As for pumpkin ( be it butternut, Queensland blue or Jap) here in Oz it an integral part of the “baked dinner”. I recall the shock of some North American guests when they were presented with same along with the leg of lamb. I was told that it was chiefly fed to livestock, so there you go. Then again, pumpkin pie as a dessert is ( thankfully) unknown in Oz. You don’t see those big orange pumpkins used for Jacko’lanterns in the shops here.
That said, if I understand correctly what you mean by “butternut,” that would be called squash, not pumpkin, here. Pumpkin, while a kind of squash, is rarely referred to as “squash” here; and the name “pumpkin” is generally used only for the orange (usually) round kind of squash associated here with Halloween and Thanksgiving.
My wife cooks it regularly—for herself, as I’m afraid I don’t really like it either. Truth be told, other than crookneck/yellow squash and zucchini/courgette (which I don’t love but don’t mind), I really don’t like any kind of squash.
Anyway, my wife never peels butternut squash. She cuts it in half lengthwise, puts the halves in a dish flat sides down and roasts it, then scoops the cooked flesh out.
I don't bother separating the stalks and leaves of chard, either, just roll them up and slice across finely (like making a chiffonade of lettuce).
Canned pumpkin ( for pie filling) has never caught on, although you’d occasionally see it on the “American exotic” shelf along with corn syrup in the foodhall at David Jones ( upmarket department store)
Of course I forgot to mention the unspeakable pumpkin scones beloved of the late Flo Bjelke-Petersen ( wife of a long dead and utterly vile premier of Queensland)…
I come and go on sweet potatoes as well. I must revive the roasted chips with za'atar sometime.
Or I grate them and add to dishes like dhal - bulks it up and makes it creamy but you can’t really taste them.
Re: kale, I like it in the Indian chaat dish with yoghurt, pomegranate and chicken peas. But generally it is hard work to eat and best finely shredded. I also like butternut squash but my lack of height and strength means I find chopping it difficult, even just in half.
I don’t like chard, it tastes earthy.
Can't recall when I last saw yellow courgettes in the shops. Usually I buy the packs of baby ones.
- Nigel Slater’s courgette and Lancashire cheese crumble (probably available online, but it’s from a long time ago, so can add it here if anyone wants it)
- Paula’s courgette salad. Slice courgettes thinly, stir fry briefly and add (while still hot) to a small dish containing olive oil and a clove or two of garlic (raw, peeled and sliced - do not crush or fry). The oil should be sufficient to coat the courgettes generously and infuse them with the garlic. After at least an hour, remove the garlic and add a generous amount of lemon juice, and chopped mint or parsley if you want. Delicious with salmon and new potatoes.
- Rachel’s courgettes and chillies. Slice and stir fry a large courgette, add a chopped green chilli and a generous spoonful of turmeric, then either coconut milk or some creamed coconut and water. Good as a mild side dish with a stronger curry.
- Ratatouille, obviously.
There are probably more but those are my main ones.