beet & beet green chopped salad

You must think I am on some kind of "you will eat your beets and you will like them" war path.  I just browsed through my labels and I noticed there is a pretty high ratio of beet recipes to everything else.  Almost as high as butternut squash or brussels sprouts.  The thing is, I kinda love the beet.  I mean, it's a hot pink vegetable, so that should come as no surprise.

To see my original love story to the beet, read this entry from last year.  If you're new to beets, just try roasting them and topping with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper or eating them on a simple salad of watercress or arugula and goat cheese.  A few months ago, I volunteered at a dinner fundraiser in which the uber-talented Barton Seaver cooked up six delicious courses for the benefit of two laudable DC charities, DC Central Kitchen and Martha's Table.  One course was a deconstructed roasted vegetable salad, with a beet perched atop a goat cheese puree, which was emulsified with olive oil, and ostensibly, crack cocaine.  Seriously, I could barely prevent myself from spooning the puree into my mouth directly from the container.  He gave me the leftover beets and goat cheese, and I ate them together for a solid week.  It has now become my favorite combination.

But since I've OD'ed on cheese, I decided to eat my beets in a vegan salad.  But really though, before you womp-womp me, this is a great salad.  Doesn't it look like something you would get at Sweetgreen?  It serves up to six as a side, or three as a lunch salad or even a light dinner.  In fact, I ate it last night for dinner and was really surprised at how satisfying and filling it was.  And it is absolutely gorgeous - the pictures don't do it justice.  It looks like someone splattered pink paint across a lush spring meadow.  If I ever open up a sandwich and salad joint, this is definitely going on the menu.  I'd call it "The Beetnik".

I adapted the original recipe as follows -

• I added spinach to mellow the flavor of straight beet greens.  Beet greens are not for everyone....they are a little bitter and need a sweeter, more delicate green to balance out the flavor.  They are also slightly coarse, so it helps to toss the greens in a little bit of the dressing before mixing the salad.  The extra time "marinating"  allows the greens to soften.
• I added golden beets to the mix for the slight flavor contrast and to add more pretty color.  I am still fighting my addiction to orange things.
• I used pistachios instead of sunflower seeds because it was what I had.  I liked it a lot.
• I omitted the agave from the dressing.  Honestly, it could have used a bit of sweetness, so don't omit it if you aren't insane like me.  Sacrifices.

Finally, an important PSA!  I've planned out the posts for tomorrow and Thursday already (duh), but I am accepting suggestions for my last 4-5 recipes!  Bollie already requested some sort of steak that can be cooked in a grill pan or in the oven, so that's on my radar.  If any of you have any other ideas, please e-mail me!  (I've long since stopped begging for comments since Blogger won't let anyone do so without blowing up their computer or sacrificing their first born.)  Otherwise you will continue to get weird stuff that I like to eat, like beets.

Beet & Beet Green Chopped Salad
Adapted from The Sprouted Kitchen
Serves 3-6

for the salad
1 bunch of red beets, including fresh looking greens
1 bunch of golden beets
2 handfuls baby spinach
2 scallions, white and light green parts
1 1/2 cups cooked and cooled quinoa
1 small avocado, diced
1/3 cup pistachios

for the tahini dressing
1/4 cup tahini
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup water, more as needed
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1-2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon finely chopped chives

1.  Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.  Cut the greens from the beets at their stem and individually wrap the beets in aluminum foil.  Place on a baking sheet in the middle oven rack and cook for 45 minutes to an hour.  Set them aside to cool.
2.  While the beets roast, rinse and dry the beet greens. Discard the long red stems and any parts of the leaf that look bad.  Chop the greens and put them in a large mixing bowl with rinsed and chopped baby spinach.
3.  To prepare the dressing, whisk together the tahini, lemon juice, vinegar, and water. Mix in the garlic, hearty pinch of salt and pepper and drizzle in the olive oil while whisking. Add more water if you prefer it thinner. Mix in the chives. Adjust to your taste and set aside.  (The dressing will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for a couple weeks.)
4.  Coat the greens in a little bit of the dressing and let sit for 10 minutes.
5.  Once the beets are cool enough to touch, you should be able to just push the skin off with your fingers. Dice the peeled beets. Thinly slice the scallions. Add the beets, scallions, quinoa and avocado to the mixing bowl with the dressed greens and add more dressing.  (note: the salad will turn pink from the beets. If this bothers you, you can toss everything without the diced beets, and sprinkle them on top). Sprinkle in the pistachios and give it one more toss. Pin It Now!

blood orange, beet, and fennel salad

Happy Leap Day!  I had a different post prepared for today (a satisfying and substantial dinner), but I am going to save that for tomorrow and give you something a little bit unusual instead.  In honor of Leap Day William, it would be cool if each of you ate something today that you wouldn't ordinarily eat any other day of the year.  Take a leap of faith.  Try something new.  Live on the edge.  If you're at a loss for ideas, you can try this salad.  I know it is a bit weird, but trust me, it's completely awesome.

 

Some people buy candy as a once-in-a-while treat from the grocery store checkout line.  I buy cooking magazines.  (Unless they have peanut butter M&Ms, in which case I buy both.)  When I saw this recipe in January's Bon Appetit, I knew I had to make it.  I have had a raging obsession with fennel since visiting Italy last summer, but as it is almost as unwieldy and intimidating as butternut squash, I've never made anything with it myself.  Luckily, I soon learned fennel is pretty easy to prepare if you just read a little bit about it first.  The entire plant is edible - from its white, bulbous base, to its green, celery-like stalks, and its feathery, dill-like leaves.  It's also super versatile.  It is delicious raw - either shaved thin in salads, or alone with a drizzle of good olive oil and sea salt.  When prepared by braising, sautéeing, roasting, or grilling, the bulb softens and the flavor mellows.  Oh yeah, that's the best part about fennel.  When raw, it tastes like black licorice.  When cooked, it becomes a little sweeter and less powerful, but the notes of anise still shine through.  Yum. 

But enough about fennel.  This recipe also includes my other favorite things - beets and winter citrus.  In fact, the stars of this salad are actually the blood orange and the beet, with the fennel taking a supporting role.  Blood oranges are small, but powerful, and replete with fiber and antioxidants.  The tart flavor pairs amazingly with the inherent sweetness showcased in roasted beets.  (If you have missed my love affair with beets, you can read more about it here.  I know I wax poetic about a lot of vegetables, but I am particularly fond of beets.)

I followed this recipe almost exactly, but I've changed the wording in the recipe because some of the original verbage is confusing and misleading.  I also used parsley instead of cilantro, and I threw some fennel fronds in for good measure, too.  Enjoy!

Blood orange, beet, and fennel salad
Serves 2
adapted from bon appetit

4 medium red beets, tops trimmed 
2 blood oranges 
1 medium navel orange 
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice
6 slices of fennel, sliced very thin on a mandoline
6 slices of red onion, sliced very thin on a mandoline
High-quality extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
Coarse sea salt
1 teaspoon chopped parsley and fennel fronds, for garnish

1.  Preheat oven to 400°. Scrub beets, wrap individually in foil, and place on a rimmed baking sheet.  Roast until beets are tender when pierced with a knife, about 1 hour. Let cool.
2.  Meanwhile, using a sharp knife, cut all peel and white pith from all oranges; discard. Working over a medium bowl, segment one of the blood oranges by slicing between each membrane and allowing them to fall into the bowl.  Squeeze excess juice from membrane into bowl and discard the membranes.  Slice remaining blood orange and navel orange, either crosswise into thin rounds or segmented.  Place in the same bowl and allow to stand for a few minutes in the citrus juices.
3.  Peel cooled beets. Slice beets into thin rounds, wedges, or both.  Layer beets and oranges (without juices) on plates, dividing evenly. Arrange fennel and onion over beets. Spoon reserved citrus juices over, then drizzle salad generously with oil. Season to taste with coarse sea salt and pepper. Let salad stand for 5 minutes to allow flavors to meld. Garnish salad with parsley and fennel leaves. Pin It Now!

just beet it

lentil salad with beets, green beans, and goat cheese

 
To me, beets are the perfect example of two things - a) don't knock it till ya try it (twice), and b) there are some things that absolutely cannot, and should not, ever be eaten out of a can.

There are a lot of people out there who can't fathom the idea of beets.  And I get it; I honestly do.  I used to be right there with y'all.  I didn't eat beets until about a year ago.  In fact, the only time I ever even saw beets prior to that was at my grandparents' house. Every few Sundays, we'd get in the car and drive a half hour to their house, and Dad and/or Uncle Jim would take my grandfather to the Methodist church.  While the men were at church, my mom and grandmother would cook the sides for lunch later that day, while Bollie, Jamie, and I would "play" the piano (I had no formal training, but I thought that four years of violin gave me a solid foundation) or run around in the back yard.  My grandparents had a sprawling lawn with tons of tall pine trees, and Paw-Paw would give us a dollar for every trash bag of pine cones we collected.  When I look back at this, I realize how much of a steal he was getting, and all I can do is laugh...he really was so cheap.

Church was at 11am, but if it lasted more than an hour, Paw-Paw would walk out.  I wish I were kidding. He once told the minister that the church didn't pay overtime, a story fondly retold during his eulogy.  Just after noon, the men would come through the back door with Hardees boxes of fried chicken and buttermilk biscuits.  And we'd feast.  Heaping platters of succotash, green beans, and sauteed spinach, all things my Dad loves, littered the table.  We'd help ourselves to chicken, biscuits, and the sides, passing the plates around for seconds and thirds until we were fully sated.  At the end of the meal, there was no chicken, no biscuits, no succotash, no green beans, and no spinach.  But there generally was a little plate of canned beets left over.  Slimy, icky canned beets, (too) perfectly trimmed (manufactured?) into circular disks.  The plate looked as if one or two beets had been picked off, but they mostly looked lonely sitting there, like the last kid picked in PE class awkwardly looking down at his Chucks until the last team captain called his name.  It was a shame, really.  The little congealed beets got no love.  My grandfather made me try one once; I think I took one bite and didn't eat a beet again until last summer, a good fifteen years later. 

I ended up with a bunch of dirty purple beets before my cousin/aunt/relative Angelita was going out of town.  (I don't know what it is with people always dumping their unused produce on me, but I'm not complaining!)  I searched for the perfect beet recipe for a few days - I was determined to find the proper vehicle to reintroduce the villain into my diet.  Every recipe said that roasting the beets was the failsafe way to bring out the flavor, preserve the texture (no slime!) and make them look pretty, too.  So I gave it a shot.  And I forgot to set the timer, and they cooked an extra twenty minutes longer than they should have.  Despite this slip-up, the final result was a caramelized, candy-like bulb, sweet and savory all at once.

So then I bought beets for the first time.  And then bought them again.  I tried boiling them once, but they're just not the same as when they're roasted.  Roasted beets are a versatile addition to several dishes.  I like them in salads with goat cheese, avocado, and citrus, or simply tossed in a bit of balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.  I recently put some roasted beets into a warm salad with lentils and green beans and topped with creamy goat cheese (when the opportunity presents itself, I top everything with goat cheese).  It does take a while, but it's not a lot of hands-on time.  It's also great kitchen practice, as it utilizes a few different cooking methods. 

The pink tinge of the beets actually makes the lentils kinda pretty, which, as we have discussed before, is hard to do.  It's like putting lipstick on a pig.  A tasty pig.  If the pig were a vegetarian.

Alright, so maybe that metaphor doesn't hold.  But just give beets a chance.  Please and thanks.

Warm Lentil Salad with Roasted Beets and Green Beans
Serves 3

1/2 pound uncooked brown lentils (or 1 heaping cup)
6 baby carrots or 1 regular carrot
2 sticks of celery
1/2 medium yellow onion
1 bay leaf
4 sprigs thyme
3 cups vegetable stock
3 beets
1/2 pound green beans
3 ounces goat cheese, crumbled (omit if you want a vegan version)
salt and pepper
balsamic vinegar or maple dijon viniagrette (recipe found here)

1.  Preheat oven to 425.  Rinse and scrub the beets with a brush, if you have one, and chop off greens about 1/2 inch from the top of the beet bulb.  Do not remove the root of the beet.  Wrap each beet in tin foil and place in a roasting dish.  Let roast in the oven for about an hour, or until the beets can easily be pierced with a fork. 
2.  While the beets are roasting, heat olive oil and garlic in a pan and saute chopped onion, garlic, and carrot on medium-low heat, about five minutes (this is called mirepoix, and is the base for much of French cooking).  Add lentils, herbs, and vegetable stock.  Bring to a boil and cover.  Reduce heat and let simmer 20 minutes, or until lentils are soft.  The dried lentils should make about 3 cups of cooked beans.  Drain.
3.  Remove ends of green beans.  Place green beans in steamer dish in one inch of water.  Cover and let steam five minutes. 
4. When beets are ready, remove from oven and let cool 10 minutes.  Remove the foil from the beets and peel skin.  The skin should easily peel off, no knife is required.  You may want to wear gloves if you don't want pink fingers.  Be warned that the beet juice can stain, so if you get some on the counter or clothes, wash immediately.
5. Chop beets and green beans, and toss with lentils.  Top with salt and pepper and coat with balsamic vinegar or maple dijon viniagrette.  Top with goat cheese and serve. Pin It Now!