Almuerzo 2: swedes // nabos

I'm quite happy you can get "swede" here, that in (English-)Dutch are called "May turnip", but are not available in May, actually.

I find (found) swedes quite hard to like and prepare. They look stunning, with their purple coats and white pants and green tuft, but it takes quite something to make them edible. Restaurant Vasso in Amsterdam knew how, and made it an exquisite bitter-sweet side dish that I have tried top copy a long time. Last failure on a French camping when combined with strawberry jam. That experiment still is a source of banter in this household.

But, today there's mr. Ottolenghi. He has a receipe that is close to Vasso's, although he uses an insane amount of butter. I don't do that, but I'll gladly copy his braising of swedes:

For two: 1-1.2kilo of swedes (really), peel and cut into 1 c, cubes. Casserole with thick base, ca. 3 tablespoons olive oil. Not too little, but not as much as Ottolenghi uses butter. Hot pan, big flame. Add the cubes (sizzle!). Black pepper. Pinch of salt. Quite some thyme leaves. Fresh is better, but dried is fine. (You can hardly have too much thyme.) The cubes need to get brown, so stir, this takes 5-10 minutes. If you find it too dry add some oil. When brown lower the gas, and add a big clove garlic, crushed or squeezed, and a (small) pinch of sugar. Without lid, or with the lid half open switch the pan to a smaller burner. Stir now and then, watch out it does not burn.

1 kilo swedes shrinks into a good two-person portion. Add a little bit of honey the last few minutes. If you have it that Sardinion honey is great, but thyme- rosemary- or regular honey are fine too. And no, it won't get sweet, its swede. ha ha ha. (Google translate would not have come up with that, Anne xxx)

Boiled potatoes, sausage. Here in Spain there's black pudding, without lard actually, but let's go into that some other time. No gravy or sauce, the swedes have Plenty olive oil.