Before anybody asks, I did not cook that beautiful looking dish above. This woman did, and provided both the inspiration and the recipe for what I ended up making with those four lonely turnips in my fridge.
Gratin. It’s a beautiful word, isn’t it? A French word derived from grater, which means “to scratch,” (not very surprising, is it; it’s all part of the Great French Infusion* of the English language, which also gave us words like “beef”), something cooked au gratin means, literally, with grated things over it. Luckily for all of us, those “grated things” are usually cheese. And what on earth cannot be improved by cheese?**
The Pionneer Woman’s recipe will be duplicated below, but I want to talk about it a little bit first. One, the recipe calls for the gratin to be cooked in an oven-proof skillet. The method tells you to melt the butter on medium-low heat, then begin your layering of thinly sliced turnips, butter, garlic, cheese, chicken broth and cream while it is still on that heat. I think the reasoning behind that is that, while you’re doing this, some of the liquid can already start cooking off. I don’t have an oven-proof skillet (I know. I’m working on it, but pans are expensive! Look, I once made a pie on the floor of my apartment.), so I let my (not stove-approved) glass baking dish heat up in the oven while the oven was preheating; it was more than hot enough to melt the butter when I took it out to start the layering. And since I rested it on my stove burners where the heat of the oven was filtering up and out, I was hoping it would stay hot enough to do some of that reduction work without my having to turn on burners.
The recipe itself is incredibly simple, and the result I got is partially from my own mistakes. Using my food processor rules — it worked like a charm to thinly slice the turnips. Using it to grate the Gruyere? A mistake; I got little nubs and balls, not a thin grate like I needed to get a really, really good melt between the layers. That was my fault — see, kids? Never be lazy when you’re cooking; it’s not worth it.
The biggest problem with this recipe, though (at least as I see it), is that some of the instructions involve “a healthy splash” of chicken broth and/or cream. What is “a healthy splash”? As a result, when my gratin was done baking, and nice and cheesey golden brown on top, it was like soup on the inside. No amount of letting it cool allowed it to set up, and cooled, melted cheese is just weird. It was frustrating, that part, because other than that it was pretty darn good. I admit, I wished I was eating potato gratin while I was eating this, but that’s not the recipe’s fault. In the end, I almost always wish I’m eating a potato anyway.
Turnip Gratin (adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks)
Ingrediants:
4 medium sized turnips, peeled and thinly sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2-3 cups of grated Gruyere cheese (do not get lazy and stick it in the food processor, trust me, and use more if you want. Cheese for all!)
A carton (about 1 cup) of heavy cream
A small can of chicken broth (I only had chicken stock; I used slightly less than 1/4 cup stock with 3/4 cup water to mellow it out)
Butter
salt and pepper to taste
Method:
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Thinly slice turnips, either via mandolin or food processor (you can do it by hand, too). Finely mince your garlic. Grate your Gruyere. When you’ve got all your things together, place an ovenproof skillet on your stove over medium-low heat (or if you, like me, do not have an oven-proof skillet, let your baking dish heat up fully in the oven while you prep, then pull it out when it’s good and hot for these steps) and melt 2-3 tablespoons of butter to coat the bottom. When the buter is melted, cover the bottom with one layer of sliced turnips. On top of that, add a couple knobs of butter (totally optional, and will contribute to the amount of liquid in your pan), then a light sprinkling of mixed garlic. Sprinkle a tablespoon or two of chicken broth over the turnips; do the same with the heavy cream. You probably want to use more heavy cream than chicken broth, as it’ll bake up to a great consistency. Add a pinch of salt for taste. Then add a generous layer of Gruyere.
Repeat those layering steps twice, so that you have a total of three layers of turnips, garlic, liquid, and cheese. Make sure you save cheese for the top layer (or grate more), because this is the layer that will get all brown and bubbly. Grate a few turns of pepper over the top layer. Bake at 375 for about 20 minutes or until the cheese on top is golden brown and bubbling.
A warning: the molten cheese inside the gratin is delicious and extremely hot. You may want to let your portion cool for a moment before taking a bite.
* – No one, as far as I know, has ever called the period in which the English language got one hell of an infusion of French words (for we are a Germanic, not Romantic, language) the “Great French Infusion” aside from me, as I just made it up right now.
** – This is the cornerstone of why I don’t understand vegans. I did the vegetarian thing; I understand, at least intellectually, giving up meat. But cheese? Wonderful, delicious, been-around-since-the-beginning-of-history cheese? Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Crazy hippies.
