Turnip buffer: The only good root canal treatment

From now on, there are the first turnips at the weekly markets. The harvest goes well into December, however, the very first specimens are culinary as well as nutritionally so interesting that you should definitely access. At the moment, the tubers weigh far less than a kilo, they taste as tender as marzipan and not as penetratingly sweet as the beets that are stored over the winter.

Of the almost nine grams of carbohydrates per 100 g, the freshly harvested preemies weigh just three grams as grape sugar - a value that can double in size as a result of longer maturation and storage. The sugar content is, however, already tastable higher than most other roots, but even the sweet potato with its five percent saccharides on the palate is far less unsuccessful than the turnip aka Bodenkohlrabi, Runke or Wruke.

The nutritional value changes little, which is why the turnip with less than 40 kcal per 100 grams also counts by far the lowest calorie root vegetables. Not least because of that, she was for decades as poor people food - additionally stigmatized by the "turnip winter" 1916/1917. As a result of the trade embargo against warring Germany, the supply situation was precarious anyway, and when in 1916 even the potato harvest was rotting in constant rain, people only had the more resilient turnip.

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"Our family ate five or six hundredweight in this bad winter," reported Walter Koch, head of the Saxon State Food Agency. "In the morning, turnip soup, turnip cabbage at noon, turnip cake in the evening, and we were even better off than hundreds of thousands of others." Hunger is known to be one of the best fuels for culinary fantasy, which is why there was soon jam, pudding and even coffee powder from turnips, which - to make the population tastier - simply renamed "East Prussian Pineapple".

Rediscovery of the hunger turnip

Even in the bad winters after the end of the Second World War, the crossroads of kohlrabi and autumnal turnips were a major nutritional pillar of the country. But when there was more food again, the rutabaga disappeared from the diet for several decades. Only recently has it been rediscovered by cookbook authors. They are available with yellow, white and purple skin, the yellow-yellow specimens taste best.

The turnip grows above the ground in the upper quarter and therefore turns greenish there. The herb should not be consumed because of the high proportion of the toxin solanine. In general, small specimens are tender up to about twelve inches in diameter. With large beets, you should be able to show the bleed, because they tend to woodiness. Do not buy roots with a greyish or many small holes better.

The turnips harvested after the first frosts are reminiscent of carrots and kohlrabi and are therefore best served in soups and stews, but they also look good as a simple accompaniment or gratin. They should never be used for a long time, because during cooking, their unpleasant char-like aroma is intensified. Slices and pieces of about 1 cm thick need a maximum of ten minutes cooking time.

Of course this predestines the turnip for ex-and-hop cooking methods, as we use them for our "turnip buffers with salmon and mustard-honey-dill-cream": grated and slightly dehydrated with a little salt, the beet slices are thin buffers in roast al dente within a few minutes - due to the botanical proximity to rapeseed, they can be seasoned in rapeseed oil. The recipe also tastes high-quality smoked salmon, but is finer when using raw marinated graved salmon - either from the supermarket refrigerated shelf or pickled yourself with little effort.