That's a pretty neat site! But it's not at all what I hoped it was when I clicked the link. Maybe the hive mind can help?
I need a site aimed at amateur idiots like myself. For example, yesterday I noticed turnips on sale. What do you do with turnips? I have no idea.
I searched online and found this highly-rated recipe. It turned out... gloppy. And really you can cover anything with cheese sauce and eat it. (The turnips themselves were... unobjectionable.)
What I need is a site where you enter your ingredient ("turnips") and it tells you what the hell you're supposed to do with it. Bake it? Fry it? Grate it over salad?
Remedial cooking help plz.
On further thought, maybe I will start such a blog myself.
I will call it, "Why Did I Buy Turnips? Help."
Turnips are tame and bland.
Beetroot, shurely.
What do you do with turnips?
I make faces at them, mostly. Turnips are gross.
They were okay drowned with cheese sauce, but then again, what isn't?
Stew filler.
Also, mechagrue, epicurious.com has a search box where you can just put in an ingredient and see what comes out. Here's the results for turnips.
Pay close attention to the comments on those recipes — a lot of times a user will find a variation (double the sauce, cut back on the ginger, that kind of thing) that will improve it.
There is also our very own Monkey Kitchen (which doesn't get updated nearly as often as it ought to, but that's gonna change in the new year, oh yes) chock full of tasty recipes by monkeys for monkeys -- come join share!
no turnips yet though, I don't think...
I just type various items plus the word recipe (and usually the word "vegetarian") into and get lots of recipes. The most popular come from epicurous, about, . . umm . . and some others. I bookmark 'em in a separate folder called (ironically enough) "recipes" and then never visit them again.
Wow, how did I miss Monkey Kitchen? I think I'll have to try that brussels sprouts recipe. It seems relatively basic.
And thanks for the Epicurious link, as well. I have tried that site in the past, but my experience is that the simple recipes are just awful. While the complicated recipes confuse and anger me. Hoot! Hoot!
I'm reading this thread to distract myself while I choke down the leftovers.
mechagrue: What you're looking for is "How to Cook Everything" by Mark Bittman. It even comes in a handy offline printout format!
For turnips, I turn to the vegetables chapter, conveniently organized alphabetically. I find turnips, and there are tips for buying (firm, small and undamaged), storing (saran wrapped in veggie bin, keep for weeks), preparing (peel them), best cooking methods (simmering in liquid, or roasting with other vegetables), when is it done (cooked in liquid: tender but not waterlogged, roasted: until very soft). This is followed by two recipes, Turnips in Mustard Sauce and Pureed Turnips. There is also a list of recipes in which you can substitute turnips.
All in all I find it to be a very handy cookbook, nay, a cookcyclopedia if you will.
I really like your knitting, mechagrue!
OMFG, Splice, that IS what I'm looking for! See? THAT IS WHY I LOVE THIS SITE!
Koko - aw, shucks, thanks! At least I have ONE feminine craft in my arsenal. Cooking, not so much.
Epicurious
is another good source for almost everything. But, turnips, man? I think that pretty much they're best peeled, sliced, and eaten raw. Some people like them as a minor additive to stews, but I've always found them kinda ugly when cooked.
I'd forgotten about the Monkey Kitchen, so I put my favourite fish pie on there. Much better than Gordon Ramsay's.
Gordon Ramsay is a cock.
Some general recipe sites:
http://www.recipezaar.com/
http://visualrecipes.com/
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Cookbook:Recipes
http://www.yumyum.com/
http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/cooking/
Weird thing is, minutes before clicking the link, I was thinking "Man, I have a lot of dry beans. Wonder if I can make decent baked beans from them, at home."
Then on the entry page I was confronted with BAKED BEANS MACRO SHOT hungry for beans now...
Turnips are excellent for about two weeks after they come out of the ground. Beyond that, they become progressively less edible, IMO.
What to do with them?
Roast: whole if they're small, or in slices if larger. Add olive oil, black pepper, and garlic.
Boil: good for soup if combined with another root vegetable, maybe potato or carrot, or perhaps with brocolli.
Stew: along with potatoes, carrots, etc. Cube the turnips into 1" pieces.
kickCOOK dammit Freudian slip - have I mentioned I hate my oven at the moment?