Roasted Beets and Radishes with Caramelized Fennel

This is an easy, gorgeous side dish that's full of delicious. The radishes and fennel balance out the sweetness of the beets. You can cut up the veggies into any size you want—just keep the pieces at approximately the same size so that they cook at about the same pace.

Ingredients
3-4 beets, peeled and cut into 1/2"-1" chunks
3-4 carrots, cut into similarly sized pieces
1 bunch radishes, scrubbed, trimmed, and halved
1 small bulb fennel, cut into pieces
Kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Drizzle a baking sheet with olive oil, then toss in the beets and carrots. Stir to coat evenly, then roast for 20 minutes.

Remove veggies from the oven, add radishes and fennel, and drizzle with a little more olive oil if the mixture seems at all dry. Toss everything gently, then replace in the oven for another 20 minutes. Stir once more, then roast again for 10-20 minutes or until the different veggies are tender when you pierce them with a fork.

Sprinkle with salt and freshly ground white pepper. Serve hot.

Serves 3-4.

Mostly Plants in a Hurry: Orzotto Meets the Complete Beet

What's that you say? More beets, please? I do believe we've got you covered.

This is the perfect quick-and-easy way to use up your leftovers from this recipe, which you have either already made or must immediately swear to make tonight.

[Insert pause for beet swearing purposes. If you still think you don't like beets, you may swear at rather than about beets at this juncture, but you must also grapple with the heart-wrenching possibility that underneath your staunch and steadfast beetophobia may lurk a fellow beetophile just waiting to spring forth. It's possible. Admit it. End pause.]

This also involves both beet tops and beet bottoms, making it a Complete Beet sort of dish. The Complete Beet rhymes, and this makes me inordinately happy. So does the fact that you can whip up something that tastes this good in only 15 minutes.

Ingredients
About one cup leftover roasted beets
1 rounded cup whole grain orzo
1 1/4 cups chicken broth
Olive oil
1 medium to large clove garlic, sliced
1 bunch beet greens, sliced crosswise into ribbons
A handful of arugula (optional)
1 oz. soft goat cheese, crumbled
Kosher salt and freshly ground white pepper

Heat the broth in a covered pot over medium heat until it boils, then stir in the orzo. Cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer for 8-9 minutes or until al dente.

Meanwhile, heat a saute pan over medium heat. Add a glug of olive oil, then add the garlic and saute for about a minute until it softens. Add the beet greens and stir to combine. Saute for a minute, stirring occasionally, and then cover the pan and let steam for 2-3 minutes more until wilted and tender, uncovering and stirring every minute or so. Toss in the arugula, sprinkle with salt and white pepper to taste, and stir to combine. Turn off the heat and cover to keep warm.

Zap the beets in the microwave on high for about a minute or until just heated through.

When the orzo is done, add it to the greens and stir to combine. Crumble in about half the goat cheese. Spoon into soup plates, top with the leftover beets, and sprinkle with the rest of the crumbled goat cheese. Serve hot.

Serves 2 for an easy lunch or light dinner.

Roasted Beets and Turnips with Fresh Rosemary and Balsamic Reduction

Okay, yes, I'll admit it. I don't have anything to hide. I love beets. Love them. And no, I don't even recognize myself when I look in the mirror anymore. I'm a beet-loving shadow of my former self. But really...why look in the mirror when you could be eating roasted beets??

Here's a variation on a previous theme that incorporates turnips, if you happen to have them, and somehow tastes even more amazing.

Ingredients
5 medium beets, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into chunks or wedges
1-2 medium turnips (ideally golden turnips), peeled and cut into chunks
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic, slivered
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
Several handfuls arugula
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
2 oz. goat cheese

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Toss the beets and turnips with the olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and a liberal sprinkling of salt. Pour into a nonstick baking pan (sized so that the beets are 1-2 layers thick). Roast for 25 minutes, then stir. If the beets are dry, crowd them together in the pan; if there's liquid at the bottom, spread them out more thinly. Return to the oven and roast for an additional 35-40 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, reduce the balsamic vinegar by gently simmering in small pan over medium-low heat until the volume is reduced by half. Coarsely chop the arugula and arrange it as a bed on the plates.

Just before serving, zap the arugula in the microwave for 10-15 seconds until it just starts to wilt (this takes the bite off the greens and reduces the volume a bit). Sprinkle with a little olive oil and balsamic reduction. Arrange the beets over the top, drizzle with balsamic reduction, and sprinkle with freshly ground white pepper and crumbled goat cheese.

Serve hot. Works as a complete meal with a little fresh bread and some roasted kale, or serve as a side dish. Pairs well with a good zinfandel.

Serves 2-4 (depending on whether it's a main dish or side dish).

Beet Feats: The Saga Continues

Some of you may recall that beets hold a special place in our hearts. In particular, they occupy the part of our hearts that wrenches in anticipated agony whenever we think about them. I know, I know, we put on a brave face. We loudly declare that they've been officially rehabilitated. We almost bring ourselves to say something we didn't quite bring ourselves to say. We casually let slip that we've sprinkled them on a salad and that we have done so voluntarily.

We don't hate them. We just refuse to call them by name.

The thing is, though, these previous beet escapades have always involved leaving them raw. That was the secret to unbeeting their beetiness. The lack of heat was their kryptonite. Their -- and I apologize for using technical jargon here -- inherent ooginess was disarmed by our refusal to put them within ten feet of a stove or stove-like object.

And then suddenly, it occurred to me...we were a one-trick beet pony. If we couldn't conquer the cooked beet, then really, hadn't the cooked beet conquered us?

It's worth contemplating. As you do...and I am speaking directly to all you fellow beetophobes out there...as you contemplate the one-trickedness of the proverbial beet pony, and puzzle over what on earth a beet pony might be and exactly how little sleep I may or may not have been getting lately, preheat your oven. Take out some chard-like roots, and do this with them. Then, ever so casually, without even quite looking directly at the plate, take a bite. Chew. Twice, even. You might be surprised.

Ingredients
3 medium beets, peeled, halved lengthwise, and cut into chunks or wedges
Olive oil
1 clove garlic, sliced
1 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
Salt and freshly ground white pepper
2 cups coarsely chopped green frisee mustard (or sub baby arugula)
3 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 oz. goat cheese

Preheat oven to 400° F.

Toss the beets with a generous glug of olive oil, and mix with the garlic, rosemary, salt, and white pepper. Pour into a nonstick baking pan (I used a loaf pan -- you want it to be 1-2 layers deep) and cover with aluminum foil.

Roast covered in the oven for 25 minutes, then uncover, stir, and roast for 35-40 minutes more, stirring every 15 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, heat the balsamic vinegar in a small pot over medium heat until it just starts to simmer. Turn the heat to low and simmer gently until the volume has reduced by half. Remove from heat and set aside.

Arrange the mustard greens in a bowl. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and just a little balsamic reduction. Top with the roasted beets, drizzle with the rest of the reduction, and sprinkle with goat cheese and a dusting of white pepper. Serve hot.

Serves 2, and pairs well with Eggplant and Tomato with Fried Basil and Quinoa (coming soon!) when you're in the mood for something delectable and vegetarian.

Spring Salad with Beet and Black Radish

Last weekend, my culinary experiences were forcibly broadened when a black radish was foisted upon me by my very own mother.

I had, until that moment, considered my mother to be a rather mild-mannered and gentle purveyor of food-related provisions, offering the occasional overabundance of Meyer lemons or pears or sweet potatoes to take back with us to Sacramento, or a spare pair of turnips leftover from their CSA box. Such gifts were suggested casually, and could be accepted or declined with no particular emotional consequence.

Not so with the black radish (or radishes, to be precise), which were prepackaged and waiting on the dining room table when I walked in the door of my parents' house last Saturday. The radishes were offered to me with a period at the end of the sentence, rather than a question mark, that stated an incontrovertible transition of ownership rather than a query about the radishes' future abode.
I was taking them with me.

I asked (I had not fully grasped, at this point, the severity of the situation) whether this black radish was the same kind of black radish I had heard certain negative things about several weeks before (namely "usually I love our CSA box, but eughgrh, that black radish...I don't know why anyone would plant those").

It was the same black radish. More alarmingly, I became aware that this revelation in no way changed the fact that I was taking the black radishes with me, and that this fact was as immune to future argumentation as my failed attempts as a child to acquire a kitten or (as I recall, my second choice) a baby sister. My mom looked at me. I could tell she felt a touch of compassion -- after all, she too had once owned a black radish. She tried to look encouraging, in an I-hope-you-don't-suffer-too-greatly-while-eating-your-black-radish kind of way. "Anyway," she said. "You're always taking new ingredients and figuring out recipes for them on your blog. So consider this a new ingredient."

In other words, I was issued a Black Radish Challenge. Here are the results. The bite of the radish offset the sweetness of the beets, and made for a perfect springtime lunch. Thanks, mom. :)

Ingredients
Several big handfuls of mixed baby greens
1 medium beet, peeled and grated
1 black radish, halved, thinly sliced, then cut crosswise into matchsticks (about 1/2 cup, or sub red radishes)
6 quail eggs, boiled for just under 3 minutes, peeled, and halved (or sub 1-2 hardboiled chicken eggs)

Vinaigrette: 
A couple generous glugs of olive oil
1 smallish spoonful grainy mustard
2 spoonfuls sherry vinegar
1/4 tsp minced fresh rosemary
Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Whisk the olive oil, mustard, and vinegar together in a large bowl to form an emulsion (it should be thick but not sludgy -- adjust the amount of olive oil as needed). Stir in the rosemary, salt, and pepper. Next, fold in the beets and toss to coat evenly, then add in the salad greens and toss until the beets are evenly distributed and the greens are lightly coated with vinaigrette. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed (there should be just a hint of rosemary, without it being overpowering).

Arrange the greens on plates, sprinkle with radish, and top with the egg and a bit of extra black pepper.

Serves 2 for a light lunch or side salad.

Beet Reprise

Curiouser and curiouser. Apparently, beets can be...well, I can't quite bring myself to say it. I'll just note that we polished this off much more quickly than I would have expected.

The secret seems to be to leave them raw, and to offset the sweetness with something tangy (in this case, a mustard vinaigrette). I found this recipe on the NY Times website, and tweaked it just a bit:

Ingredients
1 large shallot
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp sherry vinegar
Small spoonful grain mustard
Salt and black pepper to taste
A small handful of parsley, finely chopped (about 1 tbsp)
2 small to medium beets, peeled and grated



Quarter the shallot lengthwise, turn it 90 degrees, and slice. Saute in a little olive oil over medium heat for 1-2 minutes till just soft, and set aside. In a smallish mixing bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, and mustard, then add the shallots, salt, pepper, and parsley. Add the grated beets and mix to coat evenly. Let sit for 5 minutes to let the flavors blend, and serve.

Serves 2.

The Rehabilitation of the Beet

We are not exactly a beet-loving household. We tolerate them from afar -- in Spain, for example, they sometimes place a beet on an otherwise perfectly acceptable veggie sandwich, and we are fine with that (as long as we are not actually in Spain). But up close -- in the same country, for instance -- they become decidedly more troubling. Let's put it this way: there are only three things in the world that my husband won't eat, and the beet is one of them.

But we knew they were coming. It's that time of year. So when they showed up in our CSA box this week, we did not jump, or scream. We calmly extracted them from the box, turned, and stuffed them safely in the back of the vegetable drawer, buried under a heap of parsley, carrots, radishes, and about six other things we managed to cram in on top of them. We returned to our lives, and did not think about beets. Or rather, we thought about not thinking about beets. We tried not to think about not thinking about beets. We thought about beets.

We could, we reasoned, try the beets. A little, tiny, modicum of beets. A beetlette. We could try a beetlette, mixed in with other things, and see if maybe it wouldn't be quite so beety. And a fellow beetophobe had suggested trying them raw, rather than cooked, which would make them less beety as well. We could try a raw, practically infinitesimal, highly camouflaged bit of a beet, and see. Yes. We would do that. We would do that, and see, and then we could never ever ever eat beets ever again.

Except that after all that, we kind of liked them.

Ingredients
Baby greens
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sherry vinegar
2-3 lemon cucumbers, peeled, quartered, and sliced
1 cup cooked chickpeas
2 radishes, halved, sliced, then turned crosswise and sliced into thin strips
1 beet, peeled and grated
1-3 carrots, peeled and grated
2 medium- or hard-boiled pastured eggs, quartered

Whisk together a generous dousing of olive oil with about a third as much vinegar to form an emulsion, and add a pinch of salt and black pepper to taste. Toss the greens with enough of the vinaigrette to lightly coat them (you'll also want a little more vinaigrette to drizzle over the salad, so save a bit or make more if necessary).

Arrange a heaping bed of greens on each plate, then layer on the cucumbers, radishes, and chickpeas. Sprinkle liberally with the grated beets and carrots, and drizzle a couple more spoonfuls of vinaigrette over the top. Add the egg on top or on the side, sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste, and serve.

Serves 2 hungry beetophobes as the main part of a meal, or more as a side salad.