Its standout dish is honey lavender duck with apple and rutabaga (swedes).
Now the Christmas tree is a fixture of Finnish Christmas celebrations, which also involve special foods, including rice porridge (made with milk and cinnamon), a baked glazed ham, and a potato and carrot or rutabaga gratin.
The rutabaga is a cool-season crop and requires a long growing season owing to its slow growth.
Economically important members include broccoli, brown mustard, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, kohlrabi, rape, rutabaga, and turnip.
That there's a bowl of the distinctly unglamorous celery root on almost every table, tossed with rutabaga in an Indian-inspired dressing, is a testament to the power of cumin to make just about anything interesting.
"And they're going to end up supervisors of rutabaga pickers".
*** On Monday afternoon, the chefs attended a multi-course, three-hour secret lunch at the Scandinavian-inspired Luksus, in Greenpoint, where everyone caught up over dishes like chrysanthemum broth with smoked egg whites and a smear of rutabaga.
They prepared the liver with roasted butternut squash and sage brown butter, and the leg with green-garlic tzatziki, farro, and rutabaga greens.
A dashi broth with apple-cider vinaigrette and boiled 'nduja is somehow meaty and ascetic at the same time, compelling enough to make you forget the main event, sweet potatoes and rutabaga.
When Murphy sings "rooting through my rutabaga," you can't help but laugh, because she's so over the top, bumping and grinding as she recalls how her garden was violated.
"Its name in English would be the Dun-Colored Rutabaga".
