Oh, it's so hard to avoid "beet" puns, but I'm doing my best for you.
So Tuesday I gave some of the high-level roasting instructions for beets. You wash, you trim, you roast. Next, you peel.
The skin comes off very easily, especially if you let the beets cool in the closed foil packet. Again, your fingers will get red. You can go with golden beets only, but I like a mix.
So I cube these up (thank goodness my cutting board is already red) and combine them with:
one minced shallot juice of 1/2 a lemon 3 large mint leaves, julienned splash (1/3 tsp?) of olive oil 1 oz of hard goat cheese, diced
As with so many of my recipes, this is a Whatever You've Got On Hand guideline-type recipe. Beets are especially great with soft goat cheese or feta. I happened to have some hard cheese I was trying to finish off. I cubed it instead of grating it since I wasn't heating the dish.
Also, heavily pepper this. It will also happily accept a lot of lemon juice and a lot of salt, so just keep tweaking and tasting til you like it.
Then, take a moment to savor the pretty. Then enjoy.
And afterward, wash your bowl promptly, because it looks like this.
This looks awesome! I was planning to make a beet and spinach salad Saturday, and I might follow your advice and put in mint too. Last time I made it with local paneer cheese (since we didn't stop at the goat cheese stand) and that was good.
Also, roasting beets is sooo much easier than steaming them. I used to steam, but I think I'm roasting from now on.
Posted by: Sarah | July 02, 2009 at 08:15 PM
If you steam them does the color get all over? It just seems so... mobile.
Posted by: jael | July 07, 2009 at 12:02 PM
Well, you end up with a pan full of pretty pink water that you probably shouldn't splash around. And you end up cutting them on a cutting board instead of that handy foil wrapper. So yes, more potential for the color to get everywhere.
Posted by: Sarah | July 07, 2009 at 11:23 PM