My first experience with turnips didn't come until I joined the CSA. In fact, it was my first day on the farm and I was sent home with gorgeous Hakurei turnips. Of course, these were only one variety of turnips but over the years, I've experimented with most. Each turnip has a lovely, fairly mellow flavor that is perfect grilled, roasted, or added to a stir-fry. This bean bake uses the entire turnip (if you're lucky enough to find a bunch!) The greens are slightly wilted and combined with my favorite large white beans then topped with thinly shaved turnips. This bake is hearty enough for a dinner- especially if you serve it with a slice of crusty bread.
Beans: I really love the large corona beans but they aren't available in every store. I like to order beans from Rancho Gordo but Cannelini or another large bean would also work.
Zucchini: For the top of this bean bake, you could thinly shave zucchini or summer squash to top the bake.
Cheese: Stir in feta to the tomato sauce or I like to treat this bake a bit like lasagna. Save some tomato sauce then layer the top with the turnips followed by the sauce and a sprinkle of mozzarella or similar melting cheese.
Turnips are one of the vegetables that is easy to ignore but shouldn't. They have what I find to be the perfect balance of butteriness and earthiness (compared to other roots that are all earthy flavor). They are great roasted, grilled, and can be thrown into stir fries. I think the best part of turnips, however, are the greens. They aren't over-powering and can be used as you would chard, kale, or beet greens.
beautiful! Have never made a corona bean-turnip-based dish, thank you for this and for turnip prep tips too!
I love this! It's the second time in three weeks I've made it.
For anyone else making it I would clarify that the turnip slices overlap when you arrange them before baking. They crisp up in the oven and shrink down. The first time I made this, I didn't overlap them, thinking they would not cook evenly, and ended up with spaced-out (delicious) turnip slices-- plus I ended up throwing away almost a whole turnip. // I also add slightly more greens and beans. So good! Thank you!!
Quite tasty! I had a hard time finding recipe ideas with turnips outside of "roasted turnips" and this was a nice option. I used one can of cannellini beans and it ended up being more like 3 servings. If you like tomato-ey meals I recommend this 🙂