Turnip and Millet Salad with Smoked Trout

This Sunday at at the Fairmount Neighborhood Farmers Market, you can look forward to a selection of pastured chicken, lamb, and pork cuts from Fair Valley Farm and beautiful fresh cut flower bouquets from Tiger Lily Art Company. Good Food Easy at Sweetwater Farm will have the following offerings:  

Fresh
Gravenstein apples, Asian pears and bartlett pears from SLO farm (make apple sauce)
watermelon and cantaloupes
corn and tomatillos (make salsa) 
lots of tomatoes, including cherries and flats of roams (make tomato soup)
sweet and hot peppers of all kinds (roast some for romesco sauce)
green and yellow beans (make a green bean salad with almonds and apricots)
potatoes and baby beets (grill in bundles)
broccoli and eggplants (grill and top with tomato and feta)
fennel, cucumbers, kohlrabi, carrots, and radish (make sushi rolls)
crookneck squash, summer squash, and zucchini (try Erica's recipe published in the RG)
cabbage (green, red, savoy) (stir fry with seeds)
radicchio, chard, kale, lettuce, including bagged mix (make a chard and bacon tart)
turnips and delicata squash (saute in a salad, below)
garlic and fresh herbs (basil, oregano, sage, thyme) and home-grown lemon grass

Preserves, Beans, and Grains
From Sweet Creek Foods:
Dill Pickles, Chili Dill Pickles, Bread 'N Butter Pickles, Pickle Relish
Blueberry, Strawberry, Blackberry, and Raspberry Fruit Spreads
Enchilada Sauce and Salsa
From SLO Farm: Applesauce
Assorted beans and grains from Camas Country Mill

Turnips are an old fashioned vegetable, but I think they are due for a revival, just as the names Matilda, Mabel, and Maxine are inching their way up the baby name rankings. 

One problem for root vegetables' image is their typical old fashioned preparation: boiled beyond recognition. More frequently today, one would find them roasted, but this involves the commitment of turning on your oven, which may discourage whipping them up for a quick lunch. I want to remind you that turnips (and other root vegetables like radishes) are delicious sautéed on the stovetop, taking no longer than their more familiar cousin, the carrot. Here I combined both tubers in a sauté with some leftover millet, that I layered on a bed of lettuce and topped with tinned smoked trout for a delicious and quick weekend lunch. 

Turnip and Millet Salad with Smoked Trout

for two

1 cup cooked millet
2 regular or up to 8 baby turnips
2 regular or 4 small carrots
2 Tbsp olive oil
salt to taste
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 large handfuls of lettuce
1 tin smoked trout in olive oil (110 g)

1. To prepared the millet, you could cook 1/3 cup millet grains with 2/3 cups water, simmered for about 15 minutes, yielding about 1 cup cooked millet. But you might as well cook up a larger volume (1 part millet to 2 parts water) and use in other dishes.

2. Scrub the turnips and carrots and trim their tops and tails. Cut the turnips into sixths or eighths to make bite-sized pieces. Halve the carrot lengthwise and cut into bite-sized chunks.

3. Heat a skillet over medium high heat. Coat the pan with the olive oil and the add the turnips and carrots and a pinch of salt. Cook, tossing every so often, until they are cooked through and browned nicely on some sides, about ten minutes. Add the millet to the pan and stir to coat in the olive oil for one minute. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Turn of the heat and stir in the vinegar. You could serve this warm or at room temperature.

4. Arrange the lettuce on two plates. Top each with half of the turnip, carrot, and millet sauté. Layer on the smoked trout, and drizzle some of the olive oil from the tin over each salad. Enjoy.