Beets, Toasted Barley, and Burrata Salad

I’m nearly useless at growing food, but, still, I’m very interested in edible gardening. I’m extremely envious of those who so easily end up with way too much zucchini or plant tomatoes and have enough for canning. The best I can do is grow some herbs, try to keep my bay laurel tree alive, and keep watering my lemon trees in hopes of getting one or two lemons each year. I appreciated the enthusiasm for plant science and growing all sorts of vegetables in Veg-Table by Nik Sharma of which I received a review copy. He’s clearly a capable gardener. With his academic background in microbiology, biochemistry, molecular genetics, and public health policy, he has focused that education on food both scientifically and culinarily. This new book groups vegetables into families and offers information about their origins, uses, storage tips, and how to cook with them. The flavors are diverse, and the dishes cover all seasons. Although it is obviously very vegetable-forward, it’s not an entirely plant-based cookbook. And, for any less-familiar vegetables, there are handy cook’s notes with each recipe that tell you what to look for and why as you prepare them. I started cooking from this book back when golden beets and bok choy were in season, but I’m still cooking from it lately with summer okra. In the intro to the chapter where you’ll find the bok choy recipe, the mustard family of plants is described. There’s an interesting explanation about the enzyme myrosinase which is released when brassicas are chopped. It produces a sulfurous smell and bitter flavor, and that effect can be reduced by soaking the chopped vegetables in cold water. I love learning the science behind food like this. For the Bok Choy with Crispy Tofu, the bok choy was steamed and then briefly stir-fried. The tofu was crisped with a coating of panko and black and white sesame seeds, and the dish was garnished with green onion and chile crisp. The Okra, Feta, and Barley Salad with Pumpkin Seed Sauce was a fun mix of flavors and textures. I added shrimp on top, and the sauce was fantastic with the salad and the shrimp.

The Beets, Toasted Barley, and Burrata Salad was another terrific combination. Now that the season for beets has passed, I’m thinking this would also be great with tomatoes and cucumbers in their place. For the version shown here, the beets were boiled and peeled before being added to a mix of rice vinegar, maple syrup, poppy seeds, red pepper flakes, and salt. That mixture was brought to a boil and then simmered, and then the beets were stored in the vinegar in the refrigerator before the salad was assembled. The barley was toasted in a dry skillet and crushed with a mortar and pestle. To plate the salad, arugula was spread on a platter, burrata was placed on top, the pickled beets were added with the ground toasted barley, and olive oil was drizzled to finish. 

 

This book has a lot to offer with all the plant science information and insights about how to use a variety of vegetables. And, the range of flavors in these recipes will bring new tastes to the table. While I’m struggling to keep my basil alive in the heat and use it while it’s growing, I never would have thought to add some to a roasted tomato miso sauce. I have to try that and lots more from this book.

 

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Roasted and Marinated Beets with Charred Kale and Hazelnut Vinaigrette

First, I hope anyone stopping by to read this is doing well. All is well in my home, and we’ve been staying in other than going for walks and runs since the weekend. I apologize for the irony here, but the terrific new book I want to tell you about today is Cooking for Good Times: Super Delicious, Super Simple [A Cookbook] by Paul Kahan. These are most certainly not good times, but we are all cooking more at home right now. Here’s my suggestion: rather than thinking about this book in terms of cooking for guests and parties and family get-togethers as it’s intended, instead maybe the dishes I mention below will inspire some new ideas to try for yourself and your family at home in the coming days. All the great suggestions from the book for entertaining can be kept in mind for future gatherings. I had the pleasure of visiting one of Kahan’s restaurants in Chicago, Avec, a few years ago. This book is inspired by the kind of conviviality and sharing of dishes that restaurant has always nurtured. So, the dishes in this book are more straightforward than chefy. I especially loved that the first chapter is called Make Some Food to Eat While You Cook. That implies the fun begins during the cooking, and maybe everyone is helping or at least hanging out while the cooking happens. The suggestions include marinated olives, things to spread on bread or crackers like beet and walnut dip, a charred summer squash-sesame dip that I can’t wait to try, two versions of hummus, and recipes for homemade bread and crackers. Each chapter begins with ideas for what drinks to pair with the following recipes. And, the chapters go through categories like cured meats as appetizers or parts of a meal, greens for all seasons, root vegetables, one devoted to versions of panzanella, and one just for grains, raclette, pizza, fish, chicken, pork, steak, and a few simple desserts. The Buy Some Greens chapter drew me in with the cold salads and warm dishes. The concept of charring greens in a ripping-hot cast iron skillet or on a hot grill was intriguing because you’re not fulling cooking the leaves. The goal is to just get the edges browned here and there while leaving the rest in a raw state. The charred kale with beefsteak tomatoes and pine nuts with a lemony vinaigrette sounds delicious. One of the salads on my list to try is the greens with tzatziki vinaigrette, potatoes, and green beans. The very next chapter, Roast Some Roots, also held me captive. The beet dish shown here today is from this chapter, and the roasted and marinated root vegetables with oranges, black olives, and feta as well as the roasted and marinated root vegetables with strawberries, ricotta, and pistachios caught my eye. In Toss Together Some Old Bread, you’ll find panzanella with Brussels sprouts, grilled onion, and crumbly cheese and Nicoise-style panzanella with tomatoes, green beans, olives, and anchovies. In the pizza chapter, I loved the suggestion for resting the dough in the refrigerator for up to three days. When you have the time, mix up a big batch of dough, divide into pizza-size pieces, shape the pieces into rounds, let them rest at room temperature for an hour, and then refrigerate to use any time in the next few days. The smoked whitefish, garlic cream, and marinated kale pizza recipe sounds especially good. I just realized I’ve mentioned charred and/or marinated kale in a few dishes, and I want to tell you more about it. 

To start the dish shown here, roasted and marinated beets are needed. At the beginning of the chapter with this recipe, there are instructions for roasting and marinating all kinds of root vegetables. My beets were very large, and I roasted them the day before making this dish. On the day I planned to serve it, I peeled the beets and cut them into wedges and marinated them in a mix of olive oil, orange juice, and crushed red chile flakes. The kale was washed, dried, and marinated in a vinaigrette of olive oil, lemon juice, minced garlic, salt, crushed red chile flakes, and black pepper. Grated parmigiana reggiano was to be added, but I skipped it to keep the recipe vegan. The beets and kale were marinated at room temperature for two hours, but they could have been refrigerated overnight instead. For the plated dish, a hazelnut vinaigrette was made with toasted and finely ground hazelnuts, walnut oil, red wine vinegar, minced shallot, salt, and pepper. I didn’t find hazelnut oil while shopping that day, and I used walnut oil instead. Next, a large cast iron skillet was heated for five minutes over high heat. Yes, it gets very hot. The marinated beets were added and cooked on one side for just one minute before being removed. Then, the marinated kale was added to the hot pan to char for one minute before being removed. In the book, burrata is recommended, and it would go on the plate first. I used a cashew yogurt mixed with a little minced garlic and salt and pepper and made a schmear on the plate. The kale and beets were scattered over top, everything was drizzled with the hazelnut vinaigrette, and chopped, toasted hazelnuts were sprinkled on for garnish and crunch. 

The mix of the nutty vinaigrette and the creamy yogurt were exactly right with the earthy beets and kale. And, I loved the browned edges resulting from charring. This book gives you lots of great ideas and flavor combinations, and more importantly, it gives you techniques to apply in lots of different ways. The charring step adds flavor and texture and can be used in a variety of dishes, the panzanella chapter opens a door to creativity with bread and vegetables in salad form, and the grains recipes work with any type of cooked grain you’ve got. I’m looking forward to cooking more from this now and in good times to come.

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Root Vegetable Chips

The book I want to tell you about today focuses on “connecting to nature while savoring good food.” It’s about seasonal, fresh food whether foraged in the wild or at the best local-sourcing market. And, the recipes are simple, straightforward dishes made with those beautiful ingredients. Can you already tell I really liked this book? It’s Savor: Rustic Recipes Inspired by Forest, Field, and Farm by Ilona Oppenheim, and I received a review copy. Oppenheim lives in the mountains in Aspen, and much of what she cooks does come from foraging in the woods near her home. Many of the ingredients are used in a couple of ways including a fresh dish to make right away and another one with a preserved version of the ingredient to use later. There are lovely chapter titles that correspond to where the primary ingredients are gathered like Around the Pasture, Into the Wild, and Through the Mill. There are wonderfully simple building blocks to use in other recipes like homemade yogurt, ricotta, and cultured butter. There are two versions of savory, rustic tarts, and they’re both so pretty in the photos. One is made with thinly sliced zucchini, goat cheese, lemon, and rosemary, and the other is filled with halved cherry tomatoes, onion, and thyme. Trout is shown three different ways with a Trout Amandine, Cured Trout, and Trout Jerky. I wish I had a stream full of trout nearby where I could catch the freshest fish, but fresh from the store will be the best I can get. There’s information about soaking grains and how that makes nutrients more available and digestible, and it was good to learn that dried, soaked grains can be stored in the refrigerator for up to six months. I’d love to have some soaked grains at the ready for the cookies and breads. I’d also like to try the Ancient Grain Pancakes made with buttermilk-soaked grains. Throughout the book, there are dishes both savory and sweet for every meal as well as snacks. I wanted to make good use of some of the last root vegetables of the season, and oven-crisped chips sounded like a perfect plan. 

The process couldn’t be simpler, but it requires a little patience for the chips to dry enough to be crispy. A big sweet potato and some beets were scrubbed but not peeled. They were all thinly sliced on a Benriner. The sweet potato slices were kept separate from the beet slices so the color couldn’t bleed. Although, I used chioggia beets, and they tend to bleed less than red beets. Each group of slices was tossed with just a teaspoon and a half of olive oil and salt. The sliced vegetables were placed on separate baking sheets and baked at 250 degrees F for an hour and forty minutes for the sweet potatoes and two hours for the beets. The pans were rotated a couple of times during baking. You’ll want to check the chips from time to time toward the end of the baking time to see if they’re getting too brown or if they’re still tender. After baking and cooling, the chips can be stored in an air-tight container for a few days, and they stay crisp. I served the chips with whipped feta and an extra sprinkling of flaky sea salt. 

Each vegetable’s earthy sweetness gets concentrated as it slowly bakes. The crunchy chips make a great snack on their own or with a dip, and whipped feta was especially good with the beet chips. I may be doing my foraging at farmers’ markets and farm stands rather than in the great outdoors, but I look forward to using my finds in the simple, delicious dishes from this book. 

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Lentil and Pickled Shallot Salad with Berbere Croutons

I was drawn to the latest Ottolenghi cookbook like a moth to flame. NOPI, a restaurant concept from the Ottolenghi group, opened in London’s Soho in early 2011, and the book of the same name was released last fall. The intent was for this to be a “grown-up restaurant” with a different feel from the Ottolenghi delis but still without any “stuffiness or formality.” The menu at NOPI is a mix of the flavors Ottolenghi has come to be known for with more Asian influences from chef Ramael Scully. In creating NOPI: The Cookbook, the goal was to revise the dishes from the restaurant to be more easily prepared in a home kitchen, and those changes from the menu are described in head notes. There are also several suggestions for serving parts of recipes in different ways like using sauces for a different type of meat or serving part of the dish on its own. For instance, I probably won’t attempt the complete recipe for White Pepper-Crusted Lamb Sweetbreads with Pea Puree and Miso, but the suggestion to try the pea puree with miso as a dip in place of guacamole sounds fantastic. The Burrata with Blood Orange, Coriander Seeds, and Lavender Oil recipe comes with delicious options like using white peaches, pink grapefruit, roasted red grapes, pickled pears, or kohlrabi in place of the oranges. The Pistachio and Pine Nut-Crusted Halibut with Wild Arugula and Parsley Vichyssoise looks like the picture of spring, and I can’t wait for eggplant season to try the Urad Dal Puree with Hot and Sour Eggplant. Among the desserts, the Caramel Peanut Ice Cream with Chocolate Sauce and Peanut Brittle is extremely tempting. And, there are also brunch dishes and cocktails in the book. The page where I landed first, though, was the one with the Lentil and Pickled Shallot Salad with Berbere Croutons. With colorful sliced beets and radishes, it was a perfect late winter salad. 

This is the time of year when I find the prettiest radishes in all shapes, sizes, and colors at our farmers’ markets and farm stands. I brought home some pale, purple, not-too-big daikon radishes from Boggy Creek Farm along with their dainty arugula leaves for this salad. First, the Puy lentils needed to be cooked, rinsed, and drained. Meanwhile, shallots were thinly sliced and tossed with olive oil and salt. They were spread into an even layer on a parchment-lined baking sheet and roasted for just a few minutes to bring out the sweetness but not add much color. While still warm, they were sprinkled with sherry vinegar and set aside to cool. Sourdough bread was torn into small pieces and tossed with olive oil and berbere spice which is an Ethiopian chile powder with a little cinnamon among other spices. The croutons were baked until golden. The dressing was a mix of sherry vinegar, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, and olive oil. Raw golden beets and round red radishes along with the purple daikons were thinly sliced with a mandolin. Those were added with the cooled lentils, shallots, cilantro leaves, arugula, and some of the croutons to a bowl to be tossed with the dressing. The salad was served on a platter and topped with the remaining croutons. 

The raw, sharp radishes and earthy beet slices combined well with the lentils in the dressing. The vinegar-soaked shallots added a nice punch of flavor, and crunchy croutons are always welcome especially when they come with the added flavor of spicy chile powder. Seared salmon was a great pairing with this salad and a bit of a twist on the classic salmon and lentils combo. Whether it’s full recipes or borrowed parts and pieces, I’m excited to try more things from this book. 

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Beet Salad with Walnuts and Kumquat Marmalade

Back in the fall of 2010, the Blue Chair Jam Cookbook arrived full of inspiration for turning all sorts of fruits into jams and preserves. At the time, I made the Candied Orange Peel that I ended up using in everything from panettone to chocolate bark candy. Last fall, a new book from Rachel Saunders arrived, Blue Chair Cooks with Jam and Marmalade, and I received a review copy. This time, all those wonderful preserves are added to recipes both sweet and savory. They add flavor, sweetness, sometimes acidity, and texture incorporated as ingredients, paired with other items, and even in cocktails. For the most part, the recipes here are just for the dishes made with jams and marmalades, but there are instructions for making a few of the preserves as well. The book is divided into chapters by Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. There are breakfast dishes like Black Fig and Cacao Nib Belgian Waffles made with Black Mission Fig jam and Buckwheat Muffins with Pear and Chocolate made with Pear Jam. For Afternoon, you’ll find Beet Soup with Plums and Coriander Yogurt with sweetness from Plum Jam to balance the earthy beets. And, for Evening, the Black Beans and Pumpkin with Chiles and Orange that includes some Seville Orange Marmalade got my attention. I kept turning back to the Beet Salad with Walnuts and Kumquat Marmalade recipe because the yogurt dressing for grated beets sounded like a great match. 

This time of year, it’s easy to find gorgeous beets and kohlrabi at the farmers’ markets, and I also found the green onions for this recipe there. I used golden beets which blend better into a salad like since red beets would turn everything pink. The beets were roasted with whole cloves until cooked through but not too, too tender. Once cool, the peels were slipped off, and the beets were grated. Meanwhile, I peeled and grated some kohlrabi and tossed them with salt. The salted, grated kohlrabi was left to drain in a colander for about 20 minutes. The drained kohlrabi was combined with the grated beets, and toasted walnuts were added with chopped mint. The dressing was made by mixing together kumquat marmalade, champagne vinegar, yogurt, minced green onions, and salt. The recipe advises against Greek yogurt, but that was what I had on hand. The dressing was poured over the vegetables, tossed to combine, and I topped the finished salad with some reserved walnuts and chopped green onions. 

The sweet-savory-tangy flavor of the dressing was a hit. As I tasted the yogurt dressing while making it, I imagined stealing this combination to use for chicken salad with walnuts. And, the fruitiness paired perfectly with the beets and kohlrabi. The salad was like slaw but a special-occasion kind of slaw. As with the last book from Blue Chair Jam, there’s a lot of inspiration to be found here. My next use of beets might just be to turn them into a marmalade as seen in the book. 

Beet Salad with Walnuts and Kumquat Marmalade 
Recipe reprinted with permission from Blue Chair Cooks with Jam and Marmalade by Rachel Saunders, Andrews McMeel Publishing 2014. 

Serves 6 to 8 

This sweet salad celebrates everything beets have to offer: beautiful color, luscious rich flavor, and the ability to combine well with numerous different textures and ingredients. This extremely versatile salad is equally at home on the tea table or as part of a Middle Eastern meal, and handfuls of the leftovers are divine tossed into a green salad or piled into a sandwich. Use golden or dark red beets as you prefer. This salad keeps well for at least a week in the refrigerator. 

2 1/4 pounds beets 
1 tablespoon neutral-flavored olive oil, plus more for drizzling 
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper 
Scant 1 tablespoon whole cloves 
1/2 pound Tokyo turnips or kohlrabi, peeled 
1/2 cup walnut halves, coarsely chopped 
12 leaves fresh lemon balm or spearmint (optional) 
1/2 cup Kumquat Marmalade 
1 1/2 teaspoons champagne vinegar 
2 tablespoons whole milk yogurt (not Greek) 
5 tablespoons minced spring shallots or spring onions 

Position a rack in the middle of the oven and preheat the oven to 425°F. Scrub the beets and pat them dry. Line a baking sheet with a large sheet of aluminum foil and put the beets on the foil. Drizzle liberally with olive oil and sprinkle with ample salt and pepper. Toss well. Scatter the cloves over the beets. Cover the beets with a second large sheet of foil and pinch the edges of the 2 sheets together to seal. Place the beets in the oven to roast until almost but not quite tender, 30 to 60 minutes (the length of time needed will be determined by the size of the beets). Remove the beets from the oven, loosen the top sheet of foil so steam can escape, and let the beets cool to slightly warm. Trim and peel them and coarsely grate the beets into a large bowl. 

While the beets are baking, coarsely grate the turnips into a colander. Toss them with 1/4 teaspoon salt and place the colander over a bowl. Allow the turnips to drain for 15 to 20 minutes. 

Add the drained turnips to the grated beets and toss well, then add the walnuts and lemon balm, if using. In a glass measuring cup, whisk together the marmalade, vinegar, yogurt, shallots, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Pour the dressing over the beet mixture and toss well. Adjust for seasonings, toss again, cover, and refrigerate until serving time. 

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Beet Gnocchi with Walnut-Sage Butter

I’m playing with fire. With two posts in a row about beets, I could forever lose any blog readers who are serious beet haters. But, wait. Even if you’ve disliked the flavor of beets in the past, you won’t really taste their earthiness here. They’re transformed into lovely ricotta gnocchi with parmigiano reggiano in the dough as well. And, they’re sauced with browned butter and crispy sage leaves, and topped with toasted walnuts. Of course, I have to mention that color. That pretty reddish-purple alone could help convince anyone to give these a try. I still have a little fear of making potato gnocchi although I did try it once, but ricotta gnocchi are somehow less daunting. The dough was mixed easily enough, divided into pieces that were rolled into ropes, and gnocchi were cut from the lengths. The recipe is from last April’s issue of Food and Wine magazine, and it’s available online. I’m always trying to bring beet haters around to fandom, and these gnocchi could finally do it. 

The beets need to be roasted and allowed to cool before they can be pureed for the dough. I did that step a day in advance. The skin slips right off the beets after they’ve been roasted. Then, I trimmed the ends, chopped them into big chunks and refrigerated them until the next day. The beet chunks were pureed in a food processor until smooth. That puree was combined with ricotta, an egg, some salt, and grated parmigiano reggiano in a stand mixer. After mixing to combine, flour was added and incorporated. The dough was kneaded to smooth it a bit, and then it was wrapped in plastic and left to rest for about 30 minutes. The rested dough was divided into pieces that were each rolled into a rope. One half inch pieces were cut from the ropes of dough and placed on a parchment-lined baking sheet that had been dusted with flour. A second baking sheet was drizzled with oil, and water was brought to a boil in a wide pot. I only cooked enough gnocchi for one meal and placed the rest in the freezer. To cook them, they’re placed in boiling water but not too many at a time. There should be plenty of room for them to move around in the water. They’ll rise to the surface and then should be cooked for another minute or so. They’re then transferred with a slotted spoon to the oiled baking sheet. The oil is important because without it, they would stick. The last step is to brown some butter and crisp some sage leaves in it. Lemon juice was added to the butter and sage before the cooked gnocchi were tossed with the sauce. The dish was plated with toasted walnuts and more parmesan on top. 

The brown butter, sage, walnuts, and hint of lemon were perfectly matched with the gnocchi. I crisped some extra sage leaves because I always want more of them. I would definitely serve the extra gnocchi from the freezer in the exact same way again, but I might try adding some gorgonzola crumbles too. I also might try inviting some friends over who think they don’t like beets. 

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Lemon-Ginger-Beet Juice

I promise, this isn’t one of those “it’s January and we should be eating nothing but beet juice” kind of posts. Actually, this has nothing to do with January or resolutions. In fact, I’ve been waiting for months to mention this. Ever since reading the book Eating on the Wild Side, I’ve been implementing several of the suggestions from it and trying to eat more of the healthiest foods described. The book looks at the history of several edible plants and how their nutritional value has changed over time. As sweeter or milder versions of fruits and vegetables have been selected over bitter or other less desirable tastes, nutrients have been bred out of those fruits and vegetables. One vegetable that hasn’t changed much, however, is garlic. Garlic, and all alliums, offer all sorts of health benefits, but specifically with garlic, getting those benefits depends on how it’s used. Garlic contains alliin and alliinase which combine to form allicin when garlic is cut, sliced, minced, or smashed. And, allicin is very beneficial to good health. However, alliinase is heat sensitive. So, if cut garlic is heated immediately after being cut, no allicin is formed. If cut garlic is left to sit for ten minutes before being heated, the maximum amount of allicin is created. Then, you can cook it as you normally do. I’ve been reordering my cooking process for every dish that includes garlic. My first step has become slicing, mincing, or chopping the garlic in whatever way needed and letting it sit for at least ten minutes while prepping everything else. Another thing I was delighted to learn from the book is that our modern cultivars of artichokes are very, very nutritious. They’re noted for having a higher antioxidant capacity than all other fruits and vegetables. They’re also high in inulin which promotes good gut microflora. And, the best part of the info about artichokes is that the hearts contain as many antioxidants as the rest of the leaves. The canned or jarred versions have all those nutrients too. I tend to choose ones packed in glass jars to avoid BPA lining in aluminum cans, but it’s great to know those marinated artichoke hearts are so healthy. And, then I read about beets. 

Of course beets are good for you. Everyone knows that. Wild sea beets are similar to Swiss chard, and modern beets with big roots were domesticated from them. Despite the sweetness of beet roots, they have very little impact on blood sugar. The red color in beets comes from betalains which are excellent cancer-fighting phytonutrients. And, beets contain naturally occurring nitrates which can reduce blood pressure thereby increasing blood flow to muscles. The effect has been tested on athletes, and it was discovered that after drinking beet juice, test subjects were able to exercise 15 percent longer than others who didn’t drink it. British athletes drank beet juice rather than other Olympics-approved energy drinks before competing in the 2012 Summer Olympics. I loved learning this. I had kept a beet juice recipe from the September 2012 issue of Food and Wine magazine, and after learning this I couldn’t wait to try it before a run. There’s always a point in the winter when it seems like we’re inundated with beets from our CSA, and this year I was ready and waiting for that to happen. I was ready to juice all the beets we received. So, on a Friday afternoon when I was tired and ready for the week to be over, I set up my juicer and set about making an energy-enhancing beverage. I started with some ginger, a peeled lemon, and then I used several spinach leaves which I had on hand. The original recipe suggests kale. Then, I added a halved and cored apple, and instead of a cucumber, I used a pear. Last, I added a couple of cleaned and trimmed beets to the juicer. 

The color is fabulous as anything with beets always is. And, the flavor is much better than you might think. That’s largely thanks to the lemon and ginger. Really, add lemon and ginger to any vegetable juice, and it will be delicious. But, the vegetal flavors of the beet and spinach do take a backseat here. I went for a run after drinking the beet juice and felt great. I’ll have to test the concept a few more times before I can say with certainty if it really makes a noticeable difference while exercising, but I do know it’s a very healthy and tasty drink that I’m happy to keep testing. 

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Red and Golden Beet and Cheese Tart

I’ve always liked beets, but there was a time when I got to the point of dreading one more beet at the end of the season. My thinking seems to have changed since these days I look forward to having some roasted beets in the refrigerator. I like cutting roasted beets into wedges and adding them to salads with crumbled goat cheese, and I really like adding roasted and pickled, sliced beets to sandwiches. But, with our latest CSA beets, I wanted to try something different. I remembered a recipe from the files that had been waiting its turn for almost nine years. Every time I flipped by it in the files, I noticed those colorful red and golden beet slices in neat, layered rows. This is from a 2004 issue of Living magazine, and the recipe is available online. The original version was made with red, golden, and Chioggia beets, but I went with just red and golden for mine. Being a beet tart, it sounds virtuous, but the buttery crust, the mix of fresh cheeses under the beets, and the shredded fontina cheese on top make it delightfully rich. It’s the kind of dish that involves a few steps to get things prepped, but then it all comes together simply in the end. To make a meal of it, an arugula salad on the side is a good match. 

I started the prep a day in advance by roasting the beets and making the pate brisee. The next day, the pastry was rolled into a big rectangle and fit into a nine-by-thirteen inch baking sheet. The pastry was chilled before being blind-baked with pie weights. Meanwhile, the roasted beets were sliced on a Benriner. If you slice the golden beets first and stack them away from where the red beets will be, you won’t have to worry about red stains on the golden slices. The bottom layer of the tart was a mix of goat cheese, fresh ricotta, and chopped herbs. Thyme is suggested in the recipe, but I used what my garden had available which was garlic chives, oregano, and parsley. After spreading the fresh cheese mixture, the beet slices were layered on top, alternating colors, in each row. Shredded fontina was sprinkled on top, it was drizzled with olive oil, and salt and pepper were added. The tart then baked for about 25 minutes. 

Now, I have one more reason to look forward to having beets on hand. I might even have to start stocking the freezer with them. How do you feel about beets, and if you have a favorite way of using them, what is it? 

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Scuttlebutt Sandwich with Pickled Beets and Hard-Boiled Egg

The list of restaurants I’d like to visit in Brooklyn keeps growing, and I just added one more to it. Saltie is a sandwich shop that specializes in putting classic combinations of things that might not have been thought of as sandwiches before between pieces of bread. They rely on local and seasonal ingredients and make their breads, mayonnaise, vinaigrettes, pickles, yogurt, sweets, and soups from scratch. The new book from the shop is Saltie: A Cookbook, and I received a review copy. The recipes include the focaccia and naan they use for sandwiches as well as all the condiments, pickles, and other items they prepare. A few of the sandwiches that jumped out at me were the Curried Rabbit which is a play on Welsh rarebit with cheddar, curried mayonnaise, apple salad, and currant pickle; the Spanish Armada with potato tortilla and pimenton aioli; and the Henry Hudson with fried green tomatoes, bacon, mayonnaise, and fresh basil. Then, from the Soups section, there’s a Cauliflower, Leek, and Gruyere Soup and a Curried Squash and Red Lentil Soup I want to try. There are also salads with greens, grains, and bread in some cases. Every dish offers a fresh, savory mix of things you know will taste great together. For instance, I already had a thing for the combination of beets and hard-boiled eggs. So, the Scuttlebutt sandwich had to be my first stop in the book. It’s built on freshly-baked focaccia and layered with pimenton aioli, feta, and black olives. I couldn’t wait to taste it.

First, I followed the recipe from the book for focaccia with an easy, no-knead process. The dough was mixed, then transferred to an oiled bowl, and then refrigerated for anywhere from eight hours to two days. The dough was spread on a baking sheet and left to come to room temperature before being dimpled, sprinkled with salt, and baked. Up next, I made the pimenton aioli. As usual, I’m not capable of making a mayonnaise or aioli in a food processor or blender. I only seem to have luck with a hand mixer. I eventually got a good emulsion. A day in advance, I roasted and pickled some beets, and the pickled beets will last in the refrigerator for up to two months. For the hard-boiled eggs, the authors offer an interesting technique. They suggest poking a hole in the big end of each egg with a thumbtack. The tack should be twisted into the shell and pushed all the way in until the flat part of the tack touches the shell and then removed. Then, the eggs were placed in boiling water and left for ten minutes before being transferred to ice water. I was using very fresh, local eggs, and the shells did come off more easily than they usually do. So, I’ve been repeating this for all the eggs I’ve boiled since. To make the sandwich, the focaccia was cut into squares and sliced in half horizontally. On the cut sides, the pimenton aioli was spread on each piece. Then, sliced hard-boiled egg was added followed by a mix of black olives, capers, herbs, sliced green onion, and sliced radishes. I added the sliced pickled beets last with sliced feta.

This was one of those deliciously messy sandwiches in which everything wants to squish out the sides and you try to keep things intact since you don’t want to lose a single bit of it. You could give up and attack it with a fork and knife, but where’s the fun in that? Until I can plan a food tour of Brooklyn, I’ll keep sampling more things from this book.

Scuttlebutt
Hard-boiled egg, pimentón aioli, feta, black olive, capers, fresh herbs, pickled beets
Recipe re-printed with publisher's permission from Saltie: A Cookbook.

“I’m English, and the Scuttlebutt is really a sandwich my sister used to make for me of salad on white bread with salad cream. . . . It’s obviously tweaked a bit, but when we said, ‘Oh, we’re going to make sandwiches; what was your favorite sandwich?’ I’d say I had this really awesome sandwich of hard- boiled eggs and whatever was in the fridge—a Dagwood Bumstead. It was really delicious.” —RC

Makes 1 Sandwich

There is so much to say about the Scuttlebutt. It really has earned its gossipy title. It’s the sandwich that is most likely to change, as the ingredients rotate with the seasons and with what’s in the refrigerator. In summer, it has tomatoes and arugula; in winter, squash and a chiffonade of Tuscan kale. There is a rotating cast of pickles, the most popular being the beet. Some people order the Scuttlebutt as “the sandwich with the beets,” which never fails to disappoint when those particular pickles are off the menu. The staple ingredients remain pimentón aioli, hard-boiled egg, feta, capers, and olives. The rest is a free-for-all that for some can end in tears. The Scuttlebutt makes people emotional. It is an exercise in impermanence.

1 sandwich-size piece of Focaccia (see separate recipe)
2 tablespoons Pimentón Aioli
1 hard-boiled egg, peeled and sliced
1 tablespoon pitted oil-cured olives, chopped
1/2 tablespoon capers
1/4 cup Fresh Herb Mix
2 tablespoons chopped pickles, ideally Pickled Beets (see separate recipe)
1 radish, thinly sliced (optional but nice)
Extra-virgin olive oil
1 ounce sheep’s milk feta

Cut the focaccia in half horizontally and put on a plate, cutsides up. Spread both cut sides with aioli. Arrange the egg slices evenly on the bottom half of the bread. Set aside.

In a bowl, toss the olives, capers, herbs, pickles, and radish (if using) with just enough olive oil to coat lightly. Mound the salad on top of the egg. If you can, slice the feta and arrange on top of the salad. If you can’t get a nice even slice of feta, you can either crumble it on top of the salad (although it will tend to roll off the top of pile), or you can toss the feta with the salad. Quickly replace the top of the bread before the sandwich falls apart, pressing gently to help it hold together, and serve right away.

Focaccia

Focaccia is the bread that we use for most of the sandwiches at Saltie. The reasons for choosing this soft-but-chewy Italian yeast bread were equally pragmatic and delicious. We considered what we could reasonably produce and decided a bread that we could make on a baking sheet would be much more economical in terms of time and space than one that required more individual attention. As has been the case with many of our choices at Saltie, landing on focaccia at first may have seemed the solution to how to do something in the best and most efficient way, but it quickly became the fact-of-the-matter only possible choice that it is today. Now I can’t imagine life without focaccia. Its fluffy, oily welcome greets me daily.

Enough for 8-10 sandwiches

6 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
3 1/2 cups warm water
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for greasing and drizzling
Coarse sea salt

Preheat the oven to 450°F. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, salt, and yeast. Add the warm water to the flour mixture and stir with a wooden spoon until all the flour is incorporated and a sticky dough forms (no kneading required). Pour the 1/4 cup olive oil into a 6-quart plastic food container with a tight-fitting lid (see Note). Transfer the focaccia dough to the plastic container, turn to coat, and cover tightly. Place in the refrigerator to rise for at least 8 hours or for up to 2 days.

When you’re ready to bake, oil an 18-by-13-inch baking sheet. Remove the focaccia dough from the refrigerator and transfer to the prepared pan. Using your hands spread the dough out on the prepared pan much as possible, adding oil to the dough as needed to keep it from sticking. Place the dough in a warm place and let rise until about doubled in bulk. The rising time will vary considerably depending on the season. (In the summer, it may take only 20 minutes for the dough to warm up and rise; in the winter it can take an hour or more.)

When the dough is ready, it should be room temperature, spread out on the sheet, and fluffy feeling. Pat down the focaccia to an even thickness of about 1 inch on the baking sheet tray and begin to make indentations in the dough with your fingertips. Dimple the entire dough and then drizzle the whole thing again with olive oil. Sprinkle the entire surface of the focaccia evenly with sea salt.

Bake, rotating once front to back, until the top is uniformly golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, then slide out of the pan. Use the same day.

Note : This easy recipe calls for a large plastic food-storage container, about a 6-quart capacity, with a tight-fitting lid. Otherwise, you can use a large mixing bowl and cover the dough with plastic wrap. Unfortunately, focaccia suffers a rapid and significant deterioration in quality after the first day. It is also impossible to make bread crumbs with focaccia. Ideally, bake and eat focaccia on the same day. If there is some left over, wrap it tightly in plastic and store at room temperature for one day more. Day-old focaccia is delicious in soup.

Pickled Beets

These are the pickles that have caused our customers to ask for the Scuttlebutt not by name but as “the sandwich with the beets on it.” People love beets! Go figure. Here’s what they are talking about.

Makes 2 Quarts

2 bunches beets (about 10 beets, or 5 pounds total weight), scrubbed and trimmed
1/4 cup olive oil
1 tablespoon kosher salt
2 cups red wine vinegar
2 cups water
1 cup sugar
1/2 tablespoon kosher salt
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
1 tablespoon mustard seeds
2 whole star anise, broken up
8 whole allspice berries

Preheat the oven to 400°F. Put the beets in a roasting pan. Add just enough water to the pan to evenly cover the bottom. Salt the beets and drizzle with olive oil. Cover with aluminum foil and roast until tender when pierced with a knife, about an hour, depending on the size. Let cool until you can handle them, then peel the beets, slipping the skins off with your fingers or a kitchen towel and using a paring knife where they stick. Cut into slices 1/4 inch thick and put in a large, heatproof bowl. In a saucepan, combine the vinegar, water, sugar, salt, and spices and bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar and salt. When the sugar and salt have dissolved, pour the pickle over the beets. Let the pickles cool at room temperature and then put them into a plastic or glass container, cover, and refrigerate. The pickled beets will be ready to eat the next day and will keep for up to 2 months.

Variation: Pickled Red Onions
Follow the main recipe, substituting 4 large red onions, thinly sliced, for the beets.

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Mahi Mahi and Semi-Dried Pickled Root Vegetables with Herb Salt

There are plenty of challenges for a restaurant to source all of its food locally in a place like Austin where we have 80 degree December days when the farmers’ markets are bursting with great produce. So, imagine what it must be like to rely on local ingredients at a restaurant in Sweden where winter is long and dark and summer is brief. And yet, that challenge is just what makes Faviken Magasinet, a mountain estate and restaurant in northern Sweden, so interesting. In the new book Faviken, Magnus Nilsson describes how he transformed the menu to take advantage of the best of locally produced food and make the remote restaurant a destination. I recently received a review copy of the book. The restaurant’s menu changes throughout the year and even from day to day depending on what’s available. Gardens just outside the kitchen supply freshly-picked vegetables and herbs in the summer, and that produce is then carefully stored, dried, pickled, fermented, or otherwise preserved for winter use. For meats, Nilsson has sought out specific breeds of animals, raised ethically to the ages he prefers, from nearby farms. For instance, his preference for beef is that from dairy cows that are five to ten years old. The chicken, which happens to be Brahmas, are raised to an age of about eight months, and along with ducks, geese, and quails, they’re raised for the restaurant at a local farm. Game is hunted, wild herbs and berries are foraged, and fish is brought from the closest shore.

It was fascinating to read about dinner service at Faviken and how precisely everything is timed. The dining room seats sixteen, and everyone is seated and served at the same time. The carefully chosen, dried, cut, and precisely cooked meats are placed on warmed plates which are hurried to the dining room. There’s a practiced choreography of cooking, plating, and delivery. In the summer, vegetables are picked in the garden moments before they land on plates. Kale is described as “steamed so briefly that it is dying on the plate.” I’d love to see this kitchen in action, and I’d love to taste the food. The recipes in the book are presented exactly as they are prepared in the restaurant. That means some ingredients and techniques seem very particular like “one lavender petal from last summer” and “vinegar matured in the burned-out trunk of a spruce tree.” But, I took the recipes as inspiration to think seasonally about what’s available here and now. I was intrigued by a dish in the book that included a pork chop and semi-dried pickled root vegetables. I replaced the pork with a simply seared piece of fish, and focused on the pickled vegetables. I stopped by the farmers’ market and found two kinds of carrots, Chioggia beets, red radishes, and daikon radish. I made a brine with apple cider vinegar, sugar, and salt and added fennel seeds, black peppercorns, and dried red chiles. The chopped root vegetables became quick, refrigerator pickles which I chilled for a few days. Then, I followed the instructions for the semi-dried pickled vegetables in the book. The vegetables were sliced and left on a parchment-lined baking sheet to dry for a couple of days. Then, they were sliced into skinny sticks. I also made the herb salt from the book which is one way fresh herbs are preserved for the winter at the restaurant. I gathered oregano and chives from my herb garden, chopped them in a food processor, mixed them with sea salt, and pushed the mix through a sieve. Nilsson explains that as the herb salt slowly dulls over the winter months, he finds the change in flavor interesting. To keep the herb salt bright green, it can be stored in the freezer.

The semi-dried pickled vegetables were chewy and maintained good puckery flavor. They were a great match to a simple piece of fish, and the herb salt added a fresh savoriness. I didn’t attempt to create a full progression of dishes as would be served at the restaurant, but I enjoyed taking bits and pieces from the book for a simple meal. There’s a lot to be inspired by in the book and applied to what’s available wherever you’re cooking.

I am a member of the Amazon Affiliate Program.

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Goat Cheesecakes with Citrus and Candied Beets

Anita Lo believes “there are no true borders in food.” Cuisines are constantly changing and being influenced by different cultures. And, her food is pushing that evolution another step forward. Her new book is Cooking Without Borders, and I received a review copy. In it, she describes her approach to building dishes with multiple points of reference. With a multicultural upbringing and world travels from a young age, she draws on various influences for her cooking style. After first learning classic French cooking technique, she then gained expertise in Korean and Vietnamese cooking. Often, her dishes combine European concepts with Asian ingredients. Despite the array of ideas contributing to each dish, the result is always refined and well-articulated. The recipes in the book include some of Lo’s home-cooking favorites as well as restaurant dishes, and some of them are definitely chef’s recipes. She does make good suggestions for modifications for the home cook whenever the process is lengthy or the ingredients are out of the ordinary. For her fried oysters with buckwheat and caviar, although it sounds like blini might be involved, the buckwheat is actually naengmyum which is a Korean noodle similar to soba. The dish was inspired by a mix of soba noodles and garnishes that Lo experienced in Japan. A fried oyster and caviar add briny flavor in different textures, and there’s a ponzu-style sauce balanced with dashi broth. She recommends more affordable American caviar for this and offers tips for a quick version of the dish made with store-bought ponzu. Like all the recipe descriptions in the book, this one clearly shows her thought process and her vision for the mix of flavors and textures in a unique dish.

Some of the dishes I want to try soon are the slow-cooked salmon with smoked paprika and savoy cabbage, the roasted kabocha and maitake with bitter chocolate, and breast of duck with hoisin and figs. First, though, I was fascinated by a recipe in the Desserts and Drink chapter. The goat cheesecakes with citrus and candied beets is an interpretation of a salad turned into a dessert. Rather than fresh chevre served with roasted beets and a citrus vinaigrette, the cheese became a rich, sweet cheesecake, the beets were candied with vanilla, and the citrus was used both as a fruit salad in syrup and as candied zest. It was a lot easier to prepare than I expected after seeing the photo of the pretty, plated dessert in the book. The individual cheesecakes were baked in ramekins with no waterbath required. Thin slices of beets were candied in a sugar syrup with both vanilla seeds scraped from a pod and vanilla extract. That syrup took on the dark pink color of the beets and reduced as the beet slices became tender. It was then dribbled on the plate as a sauce. Grapefruit, orange, and lime zests were candied in a separate sugar syrup, and then those fruits’ segments were macerated in that syrup. When the cheesecakes baked, they puffed and then settled in the center making a perfect space for the candied beets and zest. The only difficulty I had with this dessert was removing the cheesecakes from the ramekins. The two I unmolded as soon as they were cool enough to handle came out fine, but the ones that were chilled in the ramekins were difficult to remove. My suggestion would be to unmold them all as soon as possible and store them in a roomy, covered container to chill.

Regarding this dessert, Lo suggests that some people may think of it as a mix of a cheese course and dessert. For me, this was entirely dessert. The beets took on sweet, vanilla flavor and complemented the cheesecakes very well. Meanwhile, the citrus was bright and fruity and delicious with the sauce on the plate. This is thought-provoking food which is interesting to prepare and delightful to eat, and I know I’ll learn something new about flavors every time I cook from this book.

See my review of Cooking Without Borders and get this goat cheesecakes with citrus and candied beets recipe at Project Foodie.

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Beet and Quinoa Salad with Pecan-Crusted Goat Cheese

A couple of days ago, I talked about the beginning of wild salmon season, and today, I'm talking about the end of beet season. I think I've received the last beets I'll see from my CSA until fall, and I realize I do mention beets frequently here, but I really enjoy the flavor, the colors, and how nutritious they are. We're lucky to have a nice, long, growing season for beets since they only disappear during our extreme summer heat but grow well for the rest of the year. And, with locally grown beets, the green tops are always fresh and ready to be used along with the roots. When I saw this quinoa and beet dish on the NY Times site a couple of weeks ago, I knew it would be a great way to use my last spring beets. It was called a pilaf, but I served it more like a salad. Either way, it's very easy to prepare, and I added one little, extra step to gussy up the goat cheese. I rolled it in chopped pecans before slicing it into rounds and was happy to have the added flavor from the nuts. This was great served at room temperature as well as chilled from the refrigerator.

The beets were first roasted, and the roasting time depends on the size of the beets. Mine were kind of large, so after drizzling on olive oil and seasoning the cleaned beets with salt and pepper, I wrapped them in parchment and then foil and let them roast for about an hour and fifteen minutes at 400 degrees F. Once they're cool enough to handle, the skins slip off easily, and you can use a paper towel to remove them. Then, the beets are ready to be chopped, and they can be refrigerated until you're ready to complete the dish. The recipe suggested blanching the beet greens and draining them before sauteeing, but I skipped the blanching step. They cook quickly, so I just added them to the saute pan after garlic had been briefly cooked in olive oil. Crushed caraway seeds were supposed to have been added as well, but I skipped them. Meanwhile, white quinoa was cooked in a saucepan. Once the beet greens were wilted, the quinoa and chopped beets were added. I served the quinoa mixture with rounds of pecan-crusted goat cheese on top.

The white quinoa took on the pink color of the beets as they were stirred together in the saute pan, and the mild, nutty flavor went well with the earthy beets and greens. It was great to get to use both the tops and the roots of the beets in one dish. I'll be making this again as soon as our local beets reappear.

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Vegetarian Scotch Eggs

I've been fascinated by the idea of Scotch eggs for a while now. Traditionally for Scotch eggs, hard-boiled or soft-boiled or even pickled eggs are encased in a sausage mixture, coated in breadcrumbs, and fried. Since I don't eat red meat, I'd never attempted to make them or even tasted one. Then, along came this lovely vegetarian version with an outer layer made with beets. They couldn't be more perfect. The beets give the outside a good contrasting color to the white and yellow of the egg inside. Just in time for Easter, I found these on Mess in the Kitchen the other day and headed straight to the kitchen. The beet mixture was actually first imagined as a veggie burger and then was used for coating Scotch eggs. I made just a couple of changes to the recipe so as to use what I had on hand, and I was beyond thrilled with the results. The mixture held together very well, and the outside fried to a crisp around the soft-boiled eggs. Not only do you get a tender soft-boiled egg surround by a crispy, tasty, fried coating, there's another bonus to making Scotch eggs. You know how fresh eggs can be difficult to peel after boiling? If there are any uneven surfaces on the eggs after they're peeled, you'll never see them once they're coated with the beet mixture. Everything about these eggs made me very happy.

I decided to go with soft-boiled rather than hard-boiled eggs thinking that the eggs would cook a little more in the hot oil causing the yolks to set, and that's exactly what happened. I used the smallest ones from the carton I had, but you can really use any size of eggs you'd like. I placed five eggs in a saucepan, covered them with water, added a pinch of salt, and brought the water to a boil. As soon as the water bubbled, I turned the heat to low, covered the pan, and let the eggs cook for eight minutes. I drained the eggs and peeled them while still warm, and they were fresh enough to still be difficult to peel but, delightfully, that didn't matter here. For the beet mixture, I peeled two medium beets and chopped them. The beets were placed in a food processor with a chopped leek, about three ounces of firm tofu that I squeezed a bit to remove some water, two chopped green onions, about three tablespoons of flaxseed meal, a quarter cup of toasted breadcrumbs, two peeled and chopped cloves of garlic, an egg, and salt and pepper. The mixture was processed until a paste developed. If the mixture is too dry, try adding a tablespoon or two of water, and if it's too wet add a little more breadcrumbs. The beet mixture was pressed around each egg, and I had extra which I formed into two veggie burgers for another day. Once the eggs were encased in the beet mixture, I rolled each one in some remaining breadcrumbs before frying. I fried them, two or three at a time, in about an inch of grape seed oil in a saucepan, turning from time to time, for about five minutes total.

Did I mention how much I enjoyed these eggs? I already want to make them again for a party and use quail eggs for a daintier portion. They'd look great cut in half and lined up on a serving tray. Or, I could imagine going the other direction and using duck eggs. One Scotch duck egg cut in half with some smoked salmon on top of each piece would make a lovely brunch meal. Obviously, I'll be making this recipe repeatedly.

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