Caramelized Turnips

A group of 7 of my friends and I have had a dinner club for many years now. Each month someone different hosts and at the end of each cycle we do a themed dinner where each person makes one small plate and pairs it with a wine. Saturday I'll be hosting again and this time, I've decided to serve an entirely paleo dinner! With Saturday quickly approaching, it was time to get down to some recipe testing. Typically I just use my friends as recipe testers, but in the case of this dish, I was going to be "paleofying" a regular recipe so I wanted to try it out first.

I was looking for a side dish to serve with the confited pork belly I'm making and stumbled across this recipe for Beef Cheek Confit with Caramelized Turnips and decided the turnips sounded like a great choice. So first I melted some fat (I used bacon fat, but you could use ghee or lard) in my cast iron pan over medium heat. While the pan got warm, I peeled and finely diced (about 1/4") 2 small-medium turnips and tossed them into the fat in the pan with a touch of kosher salt:

I cooked them, stirring occasionally until the turnips were nicely browned on all sides, then turned the heat down to medium low and added a large clove of crushed garlic. After the garlic cooked for a few minutes, I added a small amount (about 1/4 c) of pork stock (I will use the confit liquid when I make the dish on Saturday), 1 t of honey, and 1/2 t of coconut aminos and stirred to coat. Once the liquid had cooked a little and formed a glaze on the turnips, the dish was ready:

I plated them up with some leftover ribeye* and brussels sprouts that I had reheated and that was dinner:

The turnips were delicious - very tasty for very little effort. Now I just need to get the brine for the pork belly made and cooled so the belly can brine overnight. Tomorrow is supposed to be a snow day so I'm hoping to confit the pork while I work from home.

*Reheated steak, what? Here's my tip if you're a solo diner, or just want to have steak more than one night in a row. Cut your steak in half and sear both pieces. When the steaks have a nice sear, put one in the oven to finish cooking and immediately put the other in the fridge to cool. The following day, pull it out of the fridge a half an hour to an hour before you want to cook, then throw the steak in a hot oven and cook to your desire temperature (which I sincerely hope is medium rare :P).That way you only have to dirty a pan searing once instead of twice.