Turnips turn up in a lighter cream sauce

A Ah, the wonders of creaming anything. Two techniques seem to make nearly everything taste good: deep frying or cooking in cream. Do we see a theme here? Fat does wonders, but maybe your mother overdid the cream in the cream sauce, or the flour.

Here is a solution that brings into play two different techniques that bring out much more flavor from anything you want to serve with a creamy sauce.

First, caramelize the vegetable by browning it in a little good-tasting fat. Then use mostly broth to cook it, with a little cream going in at the end so you get its full flavor. This way you cut back on fat, there's no flour to weigh down the sauce, and you get the delicious taste of good cream.

By the way, cream is a trick flavoring; it tames the earthiness of turnips and rutabagas. And there's no need to drown them in cream -- just a little does the job.

I threw in the option of using half turnips and half rutabagas in this recipe, but you could certainly go for all 'nips. The garlic may seem startling, but it mellows and melts into the dish, ending up tasting quite fine with the root vegetables. I hope you and your family enjoy this.

Pomegranate how-to Q How do you eat a pomegranate? Do you eat the seeds, or just the gel around the seeds -- and is there a special way to get the seeds out?

A Pomegranate lovers divide into three camps: One eats the gel with the crunchy seeds, another likes to gracefully suck the gel from the seeds and dispose of them as discreetly as possible, and a third group stays with the juice that is squeezed from the seeds and gel. Take your pick. Whichever way you go, you get the tart/sweet deeply fruity qualities of the pomegranate. No other fruit tastes anything like it.

As to how to get those seeds out? Cut the fruit from top to bottom in sixths. Working over a bowl to catch any juice, nudge the seeds out of the spongy flesh with the tip of a paring knife or your fingers. They keep in the refrigerator for several days.

Tips for leftover wine Q Sometimes a bottle of wine doesn't get finished at a dinner party, so I put it aside -- and before I know it, it's gone bad. I hate to waste wine that way. Can I make vinegar with it or do anything else?

A A couple of solutions come to mind. First, there are gadgets that put a layer of harmless inert gas over the wine so oxygen can't get to it. Oxygen eventually spoils the wine, so shielding it from air is always the goal. This will give you four or five days. Second, seal the bottle as quickly as you can and refrigerate. It will be OK for up to three days.

Another approach is to turn the wine into sauce makings by boiling it down to almost nothing, scraping it into a container and freezing. Do this within a day of opening the bottle. Stir the concentrated wine and sauté to make a pan sauce or add to any dish when you want to deepen and open up flavors.

Or make vinegar. Get some mother -- the gelatinous substance that is the foundation of all wine vinegar. It converts alcohol to acidic acid, also known as vinegar. You'll find mothers on a number of vinegar-making sites. Put it in a container with a wide opening and add your leftover wine to it. After four to six weeks, you should have vinegar. Come to think of it, mother has excellent gifting possibilities for the food types on your list.