fun with beets

I don’t usu­ally post a pile of recipes here, but Fri­day night I was faced with a nice bunch of golden beets that needed to be used. I made a loaf with the beet greens and then grated and sauteed the beets with a parsnip.

The mother recipes I began with were out of Jean­nette Ferrary’s and Louise Fiszer’s The California-American Cook­book: Inno­va­tions on Amer­i­can Regional Dishes. But since I was miss­ing some ingre­di­ents and had some oth­ers on hand, the final prepa­ra­tions ended pretty dif­fer­ent from the orig­i­nals. Both seemed like good ways to honor ingre­di­ents that are now in season.

John usu­ally only grudg­ingly accepts beets at the table. How­ever, he thought both of these were keep­ers, so I thought I’d bet­ter write them down before I for­get what I did.

If this were a proper food blog, I’d have way­laid the plates on the way to the table before serv­ing them. But the food was long gone before I had a chance to think of that. Maybe I should have posted pho­tos of the dirty dishes after all the beet con­coc­tions had been devoured…

Loaf of Beet Greens

  • Olive oil
  • Beet greens, tops of 1 large bunch (ca. 3 large beets), includ­ing stems, chopped
  • 1 clove gar­lic, minced
  • 1 medium onion, chopped fine
  • 1 ser­rano chili, seeded, mem­branes removed, slivered
  • 3 eggs
  • 1/2 cup shred­ded cheese (I used Trader Joes’ Quat­tro Formaggi)
  • 1/4 pound good firm tofu, cut in 3/8 inch cubes
  • salt
  • pep­per
  • small sprin­kling of nutmeg

Pre­heat oven to 350. Saute beets, onion, gar­lic and chili in oil until wilted, ca. 5–8 min­utes. Salt and pep­per to taste. Remove from heat.

Mix eggs, cheese, tofu and nut­meg in bowl, and then stir into beet green mixture.

Pour into greased loaf pan and bake 25 min­utes. Allow to set 10 min­utes before serving.

Serves 4

Root Veg­eta­bles in Tequila Lime Butter

  • 3 table­spoons butter
  • 3 large beets, golden beets pre­ferred, ends removed, peeled and grated
  • 1 medium parsnip, peeled and grated
  • zest of 1 lime
  • juice of 1/2 lime
  • 1 table­spoon sugar
  • 1 1/2 table­spoons tequila
  • salt
  • pep­per
  • 2 table­spoons minced cilantro to gar­nish (optional)

In a bowl mix together lime juice, zest and sugar. In a saucepan saute beets in melted but­ter over high heat for 3 min­utes. Add salt and pep­per. Add tequila, and then lime mix­ture, and cook for 3 more min­utes. Serve gar­nished with cilantro.

Serves 3–4


January 27 2009 | Categories: rambles | Tags: • • • • | 3 Comments »