Charcuterie is the French term for prepared pork meat (and offal) products as well as the delis that sell them. The goal of charcuterie is to use up scraps that would otherwise go to waste and to extend the life of pork meat, and the artisanal and industrial methods for doing so have been developed since the 15th century. As the French are fond of saying, "Tout est bon dans le cochon."
Charcuterie includes cured meat, fresh or smoked sausage, pâté, andouille sausage, black pudding, rillettes, hams, headcheese and other ready-to-eat pork products that are made using a variety of methods, from poaching to smoking to salt-curing. In addition to France, countries such as Italy and Germany also have strong pork traditions.
Strip cabbage of its outer leaves; rinse the head well and pat dry.
Now slice the cabbage in half through its tough, fibrous core with a long, sturdy knife.
Cut each half in half again through the core. This will expose the core to make it easy to remove.
Holding each cabbage quarter upright, remove the tough core.
Now you can slice the cabbage into long, thin strips for slaws, salads, soups or stews or thicker strips for braises and sautés.
Black pudding is the polite term for a charcuterie otherwise known as blood sausage or boudin noir, a dark-colored European and Russian sausage made primarily from pig's blood and fat bound up inside a pig's intestine, that is believed to have been invented by the ancient Greeks.
A number of flavorings can be added to the black pudding mixture, from onions to brandy, eggs, milk, spinach, cream, breadcrumbs, apples, prunes, raisins and herbs. The Scottish mix in blood-absorbing oatmeal or barley. The French boudin noir is fried or broiled and usually served with apples or mashed potatoes. Germans enjoy it with a side of hot potato salad, and the British and Irish serve it with bacon and potatoes.
White pudding, or boudin blanc, is a European sausage made with white meat from poultry, veal, pork or rabbit, mixed with veal or pork fat, plus cream, milk, eggs, flour, breadcrumbs or even truffles. It is then loaded into an intestine case and poached, fried, or baked. Unlike black pudding, it is bloodless.
The boudin blanc is a French Christmas tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, and recipes vary from the chicken-based boudin à la Richelieu to the meatless year-round boudin blanc from Le Havre, made with pork fat, milk, eggs, bread and rice flour. The Spanish make boudin blanc with pork, tripe and pine nuts; health-oblivious Scottish chip shops batter and fry it; and the Irish add toasted oatmeal, lard and cloves, and eat it for breakfast.
A turnip is a fleshy, white, bulbous root vegetable with a purple top that grows easily around the world and is eaten by man and beast alike.
Turnips are best consumed young and sweet, as like most of us they become bitter and coarse with age. Keep them in a cool place until you're ready to boil, steam, mash, glaze or purée them. Turnips can also be eaten raw.
European in origin, turnips are used frequently in Britain and France in stews and soups, including the traditional French pot-au-feu. Because they can absorb fat easily, they are often served with fatty meats such as duck.
Turnip greens are a soul food staple that may be boiled, sautéed, steamed or stir-fried.
Look for smaller turnips with unblemished skin that are firm to the touch and heavy for their size. (Larger turnips tend to be woody and rough-tasting.)
If you can, buy turnips that still have their bright green tops and use them in the same way you use mustard greens.
Spring turnips are more delicate than their robust winter counterparts, and should not be left to languish in the vegetable bin.
Bangers and mash is quintessential British comfort food. Traditional pub grub and a common everyday dish on British tables, the bangers are traditional British pork or beef sausages, and mash is slang for mashed potatoes. Bangers and mash are traditionally served by placing fried sausages on a pile of mashed potatoes and dousing them in an onion gravy.
While bangers and mash is a classic working class dish, it's also found gussied up on gastropub menus where it may be prepared with any number of fancy sausages or gravies.
The term "banger" is said to refer to the sausages' tendency to explode -- or bang around -- in the pan when cooked over high heat.
Like bangers and mash, bubble and squeak is British comfort food, a homey dish made from a mixture of mashed potatoes and chopped cooked cabbage that's fried until golden.
Bubble and squeak was traditionally a way to use up leftover meat from the requisite English Sunday roast, with the meat added to the mixture. But now it's usually made without meat. It is similar to the Irish dish Colcannon.
Bubble and squeak's colorful name apparently refers to the sounds it makes as it cooks -- or lands in your stomach.
what you should know
"Root vegetables! Get yer squircle root vegetables here!" That's what it might sound like if there was a guy walking around this weekend's Super Bowl selling turnips with the stadium dogs and the cups of beer.
But that scenario is as unlikely as a victory by the Giants, who know as well as anyone that you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip.
sweet little turnip What you can squeeze out of a turnip is a clean, slightly sweet, peppery flavor -- at times almost a nutty horseradish bite. (Like the parsnip, the turnip sweetens when exposed to frost.) Look for smaller turnips with smooth skin that are firm to the touch. Larger turnips tend to be woody and rough-tasting.
turnip green bottoms If you can, buy turnips that still have their bright green tops and use them in the same way you use mustard greens. In the South, where cooking greens are popular, turnips are sometimes even called "turnip green bottoms."
turnip day Public opinion polls show that this Congress is one of the least popular in modern history. Maybe it needs another "Turnip Day" address.
when in mass The Macomber turnip is a local legend in Massachusetts.
what you need
We're finally getting around to exploring two turnip-featuring cookbooks that came out around the holidays: Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Alice Waters' elegant new book, The Art of Simple Food.
We talk about peelers so often that we may have to run an OXO peeler PSA to run alongside our service announcement about tongs.
what you do
For a dish with so few ingredients, these glazed turnips taste surprisingly complex. The richness of the butter and the light sprinkle of sugar draw out the turnip's inherent sweetness.
Simplicity again: grated raw turnips and carrots with a deeply flavorful Asian dressing. A sweet and sour salad to play off a rich roasted meat dish.
Tossing in turnips adds some texture to the classic dish of bangers and cabbage and makes it a more complete meal.
Turnips have a lot of water in them, so even dry-roasted turnips come out of the oven moist and steaming.
It's best to store whole cabbages tightly wrapped in plastic in a refrigerator drawer.
Kept this way, firm green and red cabbages will last at least a week, and more tender cabbages like Savoy and Napa will last 4 to 6 days.
Slliced cabbage can be stored the same way, but keep in mind that once cabbage is cut, it starts to lose its vitamin C.
