I wanted to have some kind of dramatic title for the post going live after the 2024 US Presidential election, but I'm writing the post before the election, so...I'm just gonna go with something generic and hope it's clickbaity enough that some new fuckers click my link in a moment of existential crisis. I am of the opinion that many existential crises could be solved by what I consider a criminally underutilized ingredient in home cooking: the turnip. I know, I know, you, dear reader, fully appreciate all parts of the turnip in a myriad of different preparations; you, dear reader, eat seven servings of turnips every week; you, dear reader, are the avatar of all that is glorious in cuisine, and an unattainable goal to which we should all aspire; you, dear reader, can fuck yourself - this is for the rest of us. 
This meal started like most: I grabbed an assortment of veggies and a knife, then applied the knife to the veggies in specific ways. I minced up a few cloves of garlic, diced up a little orange bell pepper, widely sliced a few Campari tomatoes (about 1/2" thick), and thinly sliced some peeled turnip and red onion (about 1/8" thick). I didn't even bother cutting my mushrooms; I just pulled the stems off, ate them, and stuck the caps in a bowl.
Once the plants were done, I sliced a few fillets out of a chicken breast, then trimmed those down to be roughly the same size as the turnip slices. I say "roughly" because the turnip slices were pretty fucking circular and the chicken cutlets were pretty fucking not. I just dredged them in some flour with salt and pepper so I could get a nice little crunch on them after frying them up in olive oil.
It was a pretty simple process. Heat pan -> add oil -> add chicken -> flip chicken a few times before it's done to let it cook evenly and get a little browning on that flour. We've cooked chicken a few times before. Moving on.
I had removed the skin from the breast and chopped it into small pieces, which I also dredged in the salt and peppered flour. I added those into the pan and let them start crisping up, then I dropped in some turnip slices. While the first side was down, I added a little salt to the top; when I flipped the first time, I salted the originally cooked side. After that, it was just a matter of making sure I got it cooked right.
This was essentially a caramelization. I say "essentially" because the heat was a little higher than you would usually go for caramelizing, but you look at those fucking slices and tell me it doesn't look beautiful. You know a side is done when you flip it and see that it's blistering some. Get your turnips blistered and pull them out. Also, make sure you took the chicken skins out when they got crispy so you don't burn them and realize that you've failed again just like you do at everything in life why do you even fucking try?
Side note: I didn't burn my chicken skins this time.
One your turnips are gorgeous and you're feeling really fucking good about yourself, it's time to drop the red onion into the same pan. This is gonna go quick, so be on your toes: slide it in there off of your spatula, drop a little salt on top, and, when it's about halfway cooked (takes about 3... and you just missed it), spoon a little bit of hot oil over the top to cook that side. If you try to flip it, you're going to piss yourself off at best and burn yourself with boiling oil at not best. Worst involves shitting your pants and projectile vomiting into the pan of boiling oil, sending boiling vomit oil into your eyes.
So yeah, don't try to flip the onion.
Last round on the pan starts with the minced garlic and diced bell pepper. Let that cook until the pepper starts to soften, then drop your mushrooms in gills down for about 90 seconds. Once that arbitrary timespan has passed, flip the mushrooms and spoon oily garlic peppers into the cavities where the stems used to be and let those bastards cook for a few minutes. Those greedy motherfuckers (the mushrooms) absorb all of the liquid, so I dropped in some baby romaine leaves to give a little bit more.
When the mushrooms were starting to get all squishy, I flipped them back over and dropped my tomato slices onto the lettuce with some salt and black pepper. I removed the mushrooms once they were finished cooking (this is up to you as far as what you want the texture of the mushroom to be; I like mine to have a little bit of bite to them, so I don't cook them all the way through).
Plating was a little bit of an adventure. I started off with a slice of turnip topped with a slice of onion. It looked pretty, but didn't have quite the size I was wanting my base to have.
So I added another slice of turnip. Now it was looking like something. Not sure what it was, but it was something. Also, please note that I did this with tongs and spatula without a PVC pipe in view, like a goddamn boss.
Next, I added a chicken cutlet, and topped it off with a little mushroom hat so that he was ready to go to a show followed by a nice dinner at the Club. He's a fancy little fucker.
Of course, any gentleman about town is going to need something beautiful on his arm, so our little Casanova brought a sautéed romaine and tomato salad, complete with FUCKING CRISPY CHICKEN SKIN CROUTONS. Yes. Those are the best fucking croutons. You're welcome.
So how did it taste? Beyond the chicken skin croutons, I mean? Pretty damn good. You see, turnips are fucking amazing. They've got the earthiness that you would expect from a root vegetable, but if you cook it just right, you can really draw out a latent sweetness against which the other roots (save maybe parsnips) pale in comparison. Not that turnips are sweeter than the others; it's just a better sweetness, if that makes sense. I don't really know how else to describe it to you: go buy some fucking turnips and try this shit.
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