My sister makes a pretty mean potato gratin dish with celery root in it. I havent had it in a longass time so I dont remember how its made, just that she used to have to specifically go to the crunchy granola mom hippie store to buy it.
Ive also had jicama in this stuff, I think the brand Sabra used to sell it; it's called Texas caviar and its basically black eyed peas and some other vegetables in a light sort of vinaigrette or Caesar dressing.
You wanna talk weird vegetables though, Ive never seen anyone use turnips in anything ever. Or rutabagas. I think Ive seen someone use kohlrabi in something before using a turnip.
My mom likes pickled beets and I think beets are okay. I think its one of those things if you grow up with it it's fine. Kind of like okra, there are really only a few ways to use it (that are commonly known) but its grown in places where nothing else will grow.
I was racking my brain and I remembered I think other than roasting it or pickling it, Ive seen a beet soup, like carrot or pea soup, and I looked it up and apparently beets are used in borscht, or at least one type of it. Other than that I started thinking I guess you could grate it and use it as you would in carrot cake so I think theyre grown and stayed popular because used sugar beets to sweeten shit like red velvet cake.
This website
www.tastespotting.com is a cool blog aggregating website and I use it to find a bunch of recipes, there are a lot of beet recipes but since its one of those old world vegetables, most of them are like one or two dishes that have a ton of people making variations. One recipe I saw was a savory root vegetable tart, with sweet potatoes and beets, and another root vegetable pie that had turnips, onions, carrots, beets, and parsnips, but it was basically cubed roasted root vegetables on toast.
I still dont know what youd use a turnip for outside of maybe growing it for turnip greens.
