Southern Comfort (18 page)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9 by 13-inch ovenproof casserole dish.

In a sauté pan over medium heat, cook the bacon for 3 minutes to start rendering the fat. Add the shallots, garlic, and 1 teaspoon of the thyme leaves. Cook until the shallots are soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Remove the mixture from the heat and reserve.

Using a mandoline, slice the turnips and potatoes on the thinnest setting, about
¹
/
16
inch thick. Arrange an overlapping layer of turnips and potatoes, alternating them side by side, in the casserole dish and spread one-third of the shallot and bacon mixture evenly on top. Season with some of the salt and pepper and dot with one-quarter of the diced butter. Repeat this process three more times to make four layers total. Dot the top layer with the remaining butter, season with salt and pepper, and top with the remaining ½ teaspoon thyme leaves. Add the stock to the dish, pouring it in around the edges.

Cover the casserole tightly with aluminum foil and bake for 1½ hours. Remove the foil and cook for 20 more minutes to caramelize the top layer.

Let it rest for 30 minutes, then cut into portions and serve.

I
AM SURE THE THOUGHT
of spending all day in the kitchen elbow deep in flour making dough drives some people absolutely mad. Luckily, from the time I started cooking I was able to find that making things with my hands produced a meditative-like comfort, where the process is just as important as the finished result.

One of the most inspiring examples of this that I have ever seen was on a trip to San Francisco that coincided with the Tibetan New Year. Buddhist monks were displaying their elaborate sculptures made of colored butter, a tradition dating back to the early seventeenth century. They had been working on them for months. The sculptures were truly breathtaking and, in the Buddhist tradition, impermanent. At the end of the celebration, all of the butter sculptures were melted. That is where I find myself when I spend the day making pasta. That doesn’t mean Slade and I don’t buy a box of dried pasta off the shelf—we do. But when I have the luxury of spending the day with the tradition of forming noodles made of the most basic of ingredients, I cherish it. Of course, those homemade noodles are impermanent, too, providing full, comforted tummies just for the dinner hour. What’s more important is the long, lovely day I spent getting there.

To make the pasta, in a large saucepan, cook the sweet potato juice over medium heat until it is reduced by three-quarters and thick, with the consistency of paint. Let the reduction cool.