Rutabaga Potato Salad

Rutabaga ended up in my kitchen because of last week's CSA box.  I initially thought the rutabaga was a turnip and had chosen recipes to make and then learned I had the wrong root vegetable.  Whoops.

So I refocused and found two more recipes to try but with rutabaga this time.

The first was a rutabaga potato salad, a recipe that I found from the Chow Locally newsletter (our CSA).  I made a small change as the original recipe called for olive oil.  However, to me a potato salad isn't a potato salad unless it has mayo (or in our case vegenaise).  Here's is what I did:

Rutabaga Potato Salad

Ingredients

• 1 rutabaga peeled and cut into chunks
• 1 pound red potatoes, scrubbed and quartered (same size as the rutabaga chunks)
• 2 Tbsp white wine vinegar
• 1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
• sea salt and ground pepper
• 1/4 cup vegenaise (or mayonnaise)
• 2 ribs of celery, halved lengthwise and sliced crosswise (can also add 1/4 cup coarsely chopped celery leaves but I only had hearts)

Directions

1. Set a steamer basket in a large saucepan.  Fill with enough water to come just below basket.  Bring to a boil; place rutabaga in basket and reduce heat to medium.  Cover and steam 5 minutes.  Add potatoes, cover and steam until vegetables are just tender, about 15 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in a large bowl, whisk together vinegar and Dijon; season with salt and pepper.  When potatoes are cooked, transfer to bowl with vinegar mixture.  Toss to combine, let cool 5-10 min in the refrigerator.
3. When potato mixture is cool mix in vegenaise, celery and celery leaves.  Season with salt and pepper.

The husband thought the salad was too sweet.  Skipping the white wine vinegar would probably fix that.  I thought is was wonderful and the 4 year old ate some of it.  This is a recipe we will do again!  My next attempt at cooking with the rutabaga will be oven fries tonight.