Warm Roasted Turnip and Sugar Snap Pea Salad

Fresh at the farmer’s market this week are beautiful root veggies, gorgeous greens, and addictive sugar snap peas. They’re all at the height of their yumminess right now and I just want to pile them in a big bowl and gobble them up. Which is basically what this recipe is about.

Turnips, depending on who you ask, range from underappreciated to just plain scorned. But this time of year they are sweet, mellow, and still possess a hearty potato-like quality that should put them firmly in the “adored” category.

This dish is a Summery Cornucopia of Fun - a mix of crunchy, leafy, and starchy vegetables. Don’t leave out the chard - the stems give the salad a nice crunch and a beautiful magenta color. If your turnips have the greens still attached, chop those up too and sauté them with chard. And if you’re not down with hardboiled eggs you could use  tofu strips or garbanzo beans instead.

To give some credit where credit is due, this salad is inspired by a warm potato salad recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks- Peter Berley’s Fresh Foods Fast. The book focuses on full vegetarian menus, not just separate dishes, and the menus are categorized by season. So basically, you flip to the section of the current season and start going “I want to make this, and this, and this…” and it’s all laid out with helpful menu planning tips and mouthwatering photos. Some of the dishes are fancy, some of them homey, but all of them are well within the range of do-ability for an upstart vegetarian enthusiast. I wish the book was three times as thick.

serves: 3 - 4
time: 45 minutes

Warm Roasted Turnip and Sugar Snap Pea Salad

bunch of turnips (8 - 12), cut into wedges
bunch of small red onions (6 small, 3 large), cut into wedges
4 free-range eggs
1 bunch of red or rainbow chard including some stem, chopped
2 pints of sugar snap peas, ends snapped and string removed
3 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp lemon juice
2 Tbsp flavored vinegar (I used tarragon vinegar)
1 Tbsp grainy mustard
salt and pepper

Bring a pot of water to boil and turn on the broiler.

Pile the turnips and onions on a baking sheet, coat with olive oil and broil until the turnips are spotty golden brown -about 15 minutes- turning every few minutes.

When the water is boiling, add the eggs and cook for 11 minutes on a low boil. Put the eggs in cold water to cool. Peel and cut into wedges.

Saute the chard for a few minutes until wilted.

Using the hot water from the eggs, blanch the peas for about 2 minutes. Submerge in cold water to cool to stop the cooking process.

Mix up the olive oil, lemon juice, vinegar, mustard and salt and pepper. Add the turnips, onions, chard, snap peas, and egg wedges to a large bowl, pour the dressing over and mix. Serve warm, or chilled is nice too.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 26th, 2007 at 8:50 pm and is filed under Salads, Summer, Spring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.