đ+: Rustic Rutabaga Rösti
how to make rösti the old-fashioned way + a gustatory Q&A
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At this point in the season, when spring starts to appear in tentative starts and bursts (snow melts, more snow comes, snow melts againâŠ* repeat ad vernum), I find myself slowly turning away from soups and stews, and increasingly leaning towards lighter dishes that rely on the same stored veg that make soups and stews so delectably cosy on darker days. Enter the hardy rutabaga.
Members of the brassica (cruciferous cabbage) family, rutabagas store exceptionally well over winter and therefore make excellent candidates for late winter / early spring meals (they can otherwise usually be enjoyed freshly harvested from September to November). To me, they taste somewhere between a carrot and a potato, and were surprisingly delicious when I first tried them as my mind was expecting something more akin to a punchy turnip or nippy cabbage core. Personally, I think if we re-baptised them the potato-carrot (potarrot? carrato?) theyâd become a whole lot more popular.
*itâs amazing to me that most of us with so-called âproperâ winters manage to forget every year that the first taste of spring is always nothing more than a beguiling promise â luckily we have memes and even more memes to make light of this collective amnesia
As I live in Norway and the rutabaga has its roots in Scandinavia (likely Sweden, to be precise, hence the sometimes-used name âSwedish turnipâ AKA swede), I find the vegetable is pleasingly popular here. Its most common use seems to be in place of potatoes in a mash, which is absolutely delicious, unless you get lured into buying it dehydrated in a packet, in which case it sadly tastes fake and foul.
more on fake (and real) foods here:
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Ironically, if you donât have any rutabaga on hand, I do think that a mixture of carrot and potato would work quite nicely as a substitution. The main thing to note is that while potatoes should not be consumed unless properly cooked, you can eat rutabaga raw â much like you would kohlrabi or sunchokes in thin shreds or slices â so you donât have to worry too much about making sure youâve cooked your rutabaga all the way through.
rutabaga rösti with sage & crÚme fraßche
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