Neeps and Tatties al la Minnesota

Good Evening Everyone,

Well, I ordinarily don't do posting at this hour of the day but this is a special one and I'm dedicating it to my buddy Allison in Scotland, whose idea neeps and tatties are. And here is the story behind this:

Several weeks ago Allison mentioned neeps and tatties on her Facebook page and I saw the posting and had no idea what she was talking about. So I looked it up: it's mashed turnips and potatoes, prepared with butter and salt and pepper and after a few exchanges with Allison I decided to try it out. I couldn't find turnips locally here at the time but yesterday I did and I'm going to give this a shot.

Here is neeps and tatties with a few revisions to the original recipe:

Here are the basic ingredients-yukon gold potatoes and a turnip:

I don't think I've ever eaten a turnip or even bought a turnip. I don't know why, I just haven't. While I was preparing it, one of the kids came in and asked what it was and I told him and he said, "I don't think I'm going to eat that." So I lied and told him I wouldn't put it in the recipe. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do. Anyway here is the turnip with the top sliced off:

And here it is diced into chunks:

I put it in a sauce pan and boiled the chunks al dente:

Next, I peeled and cubed the potatoes. Pretty straight forward:

And I set those to cook until al dente as well:

After about 10 minutes of cooking I removed the veggies from the stove and drained them and let them drain for several minutes to get the water out of them. Then I added about 2-3 tablespoons of olive oil to a frying pan and heated it up:

And I added about 1 teaspoon of rosemary to the olive oil and cooked it for a few seconds until it turned brown:

And I placed the turnip and potatoes in the pan and sprinkled about 1/2 teaspoon of seasoned pepper over the top:

I covered it and turned down the heat to about 6 ( I don't know exactly what 6 means-it's probably half way between stone cold and incinerated) and let it brown for about 10 minutes:

After about 10 minutes I stirred up the neeps and tatties and kept cooking them until they were brown and crispy and cooked completely through:

Well, I liked them and my husband did too. I ate mine with some kippers and really enjoyed the meal. Older son ate them (heh, heh, heh) and Critter is in the process of shoveling them down. All in all, a keeper.

Note to Allison: I didn't make the traditional recipe like you described. I can't eat butter and I thought that browning them might make them more flavorful and thus more likely to be consumed by the Woodcock tribe too. But I enjoyed them and I'm having the left overs for breakfast tomorrow with a scrambled egg.

VW