Rutabaga, garlic mashed potato-style

I made rutabaga in the style of my garlic mashed potatoes and it was excellent! It's a good, less starchy substitute for mashed potatoes. The rutabaga is a cross between a turnip and a cabbage, apparently .

I also got some ideas from this article about rutabaga, Irish-style .

Serves 2-3, more if you have a particularly large rutabaga

1 rutabaga 1 clove garlic, minced (optional) 1 - 2 tbsp. butter salt freshly ground white pepper heavy cream (optional)

Here's the rutabaga I got from my CSA.

I cut off the very bottom (root end) so it would sit nicely on the cutting board.

The article above has an interesting technique for peeling it, but I did not use that technique, which involves cutting slices and using a paring knife. The skin appears to be a little thick to use a vegetable peeler. Instead, using a very sharp chef's knife I just carefully trimmed off the outer skin. It's the same way I peel celeriac, which has an even thicker skin.

Then I trimmed off the stalk end, cut it in half, then into slices, then into small cubes.

In a pot of salted water.

Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a low boil and cook for 35 minutes. If not tender yet, cook for another 5-10 minutes.

Drain in a colander.

Here's where things got a little complicated. I intended to use my ricer, which is also what I used to make mashed potatoes.

On one hand, this worked very well solving an unexpected problem. Unlike potatoes, rutabaga absorbs a lot of water. The first squeeze in the ricer caused a whole lot of it to pour out. This worked great, though, because I was able to discard the excess water.

Unfortunately, for one rutabaga in my very large ricer, basically almost no vegetable came out and most of it was still stuck inside, un-riced. It might be possible to use a potato masher for the stuff stuck inside, but I ended up throwing it all into the food processor, which actually worked quite well.

I hate to have to use both, but the ricer is very effective in squeezing the water out, and the food processor for puréeing.

Anyway, back into the pot it went with the garlic and butter. If necessary, turn the heat on low to get the butter to melt. Add salt to taste and freshly ground white pepper. If you want to make it more mashed potato-y, add some heavy cream, which I did.

That's it! I vacuum sealed and froze one serving and the other is for dinner tonight. The serving I froze was 4.1 oz., which seems about right.

Here's how I served it, with roasted chicken, gravy and roasted Brussels sprouts. Delicious!