Recipes show all
November 2010
galette of braised turnip, portobello mushrooms and pecans with red wine gravy
Over the past few years, this galette has become one of those dishes that not only mark the coming of winter but actually make us look forward to it. Kind of, if you know what I mean. Like asparagus dishes in the spring, we begin to talk about the turnip galette about a month before it is decent to do so, before the clocks fall back and while there is still a small chance of the occasional warm day. In local timekeeping, when the jazz festival is done and dusted, that’s turnip time.
We got some Gortnanain turnips this year, monsters, bigger than a football and with ambitions towards basketball. One of the things I love about the way the farm develops every year is that Ultan matches his forays into the exotic with plantings of a few rows of traditional crops. There’s no money in turnips, but there’s something of a sense of balance in having them alongside the cime di rapa and whatnot.
Not only is the humble turnip the focus of this elegant main course, it is also the part you have to get right for the dish to work. It might not seem easy at first to cut the perfect slices of turnip – squares of 7-8cm sides and 2-3cm thick – but buying two turnips will give you plenty of room for mistakes. A sharp knife and steady hand will do the job, or a mandoline, if you’re comfortable using one. Be careful! After that, it’s important to braise the slices properly – there’s the world of difference between a slice of boiled turnip and a meltingly soft, richly flavoured braised one. Get your turnips right and the rest of the dish falls into place. That sounds like one of those plaques you might see hanging in an office – I might get one knocked up for the Paradiso kitchen.
The red wine sauce is essentially a flavoured reduction of wine and tomatoes, thickened and enriched with butter. A frequent question when I teach this at demos is whether it can be thickened another way, and the simple answer is yes, cornflour would do it. But the butter is doing more than thickening the sauce, it is also balancing the acidic flavours of the reduction and adding a pleasureable richness, the element that makes you go …mmm…when you slide a forkful into your mouth for the first time. Believe me, a turnip likes nothing better than a dose of luxury – why else have your ancestors been mashing the things with butter for centuries?
Serve the galettes with some brussels sprouts – we flavour ours with orange and caraway – and a little mash to soak up the red wine gravy.
2 large turnips
4 tablespoons butter
100mls white wine
100mls vegetable stock or water
4 large Portobello mushrooms
100g cream cheese
100g pecans
400mls red wine
200mls tomato passata or pureed tinned tomato
1 small red onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
½ stick celery, chopped
2 cloves
4 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, diced
Peel and trim the turnips to get pieces from which you can cut square slices with sides of about 7-8cm and about 2-3mm thick. You will need four slices per portion, sixteen in all. Bring a pot of water to a boil and cook the turnips for 7 minutes. Drain the turnip slices, then transfer them to one or two oven dishes.
Melt the butter, wine and stock together and pour this over the turnip slices. Season with a little salt, cover loosely with foil and place the dishes in an oven at 160c / 320f. After 30 minutes, check the turnips. If they are not yet tender, continue cooking them, ensuring that they don’t dry out, until they are fully cooked but not too soft to handle. The liquid should be almost all gone too.Place the mushrooms on an oven tray, brush them with butter or olive oil, season with salt and roast them in a medium hot oven until they are tender. Chop the mushrooms coarsely and put them in a food processor with the pecans. Pulse carefully to get a coarse puree. By hand, mash or fold in the cream cheese.
Place the wine, tomato, onion, garlic, celery and cloves in a pan and bring to a boil. Simmer for 15 minutes, then blend and pass the puree through a sieve. Return the sauce to a pan and reduce by half. Season lightly with salt and pepper.
Place four slices of turnip on a parchment-lined oven tray and cover with some of the mushroom-pecan mixture. Cover each with another turnip slice, and repeat until each has four turnip layers and three mushroom. Press gently on each galette, brush the tops with a little melted butter and place the galettes in a moderate oven, to heat through for 7-10 minutes.
Just before you serve the galettes, heat the reduced red wine sauce and whisk in the butter over high heat. The sauce will thicken and become a little glossy.
Serve the galettes with a generous amount of wine sauce poured around, and some brussels sprouts on the side.
#1 · PatrickF
Wednesday, 11 January, 2012loved this recipe at Paradiso one cold January night two years ago and make it from the cookbook when the turnips are in season. While it takes time, they will keep in the fridge for a day or two (handy if you’re entertaining and want to make in advance). Also, for a richer version at Christmas, try replacing the red wine with port, the pecans with toasted walnuts and half the cream cheese with stilton or another crumbly blue cheese – lovely and even better with sprouts…