For the last two days, I have been cooking from what we got and here are a few recipes. It turns out, the fresher your produce is, the less you want to manipulate it. So, these are generally simple, healthy recipes.
I will post them separately for ease of later reference.
My meal last night consisted of roasted beets, carrot top vinaigrette, braised greens, garden salad, grilled salmon patties (frozen from costco, but delicious), and israeli couscous cooked with a small amount of salt.
Here's my failsafe method for roasting beets. It's a well established method and I don't dare take credit for it lest someone's great-great-grandmother haunts me for my impudence.
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. If you are cooking other things in the oven, you can turn the heat down, just be aware that they will take much longer to roast at lower temperatures. Even at 425, beets will take a minimum of 45 minutes to roast.
So, scrub the beets clean of dirt, cut the greens off the top one inch up the stalks (save the greens for braised greens) and cut the root off leaving about a half inch of the root. The reasons for leaving the extra inch of stem and root are to keep the beet as sealed in its skin as possible. If you cut the tops off or cut the beets in half, they will lose a lot of their moisture and the delicious beet juice that keeps them sweet.
So, take your beets and put them in the smallest covered dish you have that they still fit in while in one layer. If you need to roast a large amount, you can put the beets in a roasting pan and cover with foil. Add 1/4 inch of water in the bottom and put in the oven on the middle rack. The cooking time depends on the oven temperature and the size of the beets. Unless the beets are the size of ping pong balls, they will cook for at least 45 minutes.
Check for doneness by poking with a fork. The fork will easily pierce through the flesh of the beet through the middle. If they are still resistant, put them back in the over for a minimum of 8 minute intervals. Remember, each time you poke them with a fork or open the roasting dish, you are losing moisture in your final beets.
When they are finished, let them cool until you can handle them. Peel by pushing on the skin fairly lightly. The skin will be loose and you can peel it just using your fingers. If you have a dark red variety of beet, the juice will stain your fingers quickly. If you have a problem with that, you might want to obtain some plastic cooking gloves or buy the golden or chioggia varieties of beets that have very little pigment comparatively. Cut them in the shape desired and serve.
Beets cooked in this manner can be stored and reheated by roasting in an oven until they start to brown or cooked quickly in a saute pan. They can be used cold on salads or as their own salad with a little vinaigrette.
If you attached to the beautiful colors of the rainbow or golden beets (some of them are even candy cane colored) I suggest storing them away from the deep red beets. Almost immediately on contact, the red pigment will dye the other beets.
Adding Flavors:
Straight out of the oven, fresh beets barely need any flavoring added. Generally, I just add a tsp of olive oil, 1/4 tsp red wine, and a dash of salt and pepper to approx. 3 cups cut beets.
Alternatively, you can drizzle a vinaigrette that matches the rest of the meal you are serving.
If you wish to add flavors while roasting, feel free to add garlic and strong herbs such as rosemary or thyme. You can also add whole spices to add to the flavors. Many people like to add sweet spices such as cinnamon sticks and allspice, but I find that they bring out bitter notes in the beets that I don't particularly like.
No comments:
Post a Comment