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Posts with tag beets
Making the Most of Beets -- Tip of the Day
Beets can offer myriad culinary pleasures when treated right.
Tasty Temptations from YumSugar
Each Thursday, we round up a selection of scrumptious links from our friends over at YumSugar. Here's what they've got cooking this week:
From the freezer to the jar to the mouths of lucky recipients: YumSugar marinates and jars artichoke hearts. Too bad they only keep for a week!
David Wondrich's book "Imbibe!" -- "part cocktail-making manual, part biography and part bartending history" -- outlines the beloved hooch of yesteryear.
A Derby Day-perfect Old Fashioned recipe.
Beets: Are they for loving or loathing?
... and maybe more importantly: Paula Deen: do you love her, or desperately want to leave her?
YumSugar melts tastebuds with pictures from Taste of the Nation in San Francisco, and provides a delicious look at Mission Beach Cafe.
And would you ever eat a sweet seven-layer dip?
The Globe and Mail in 60 Seconds - Beets, Wine and Eating Out
- The woes of the disliked beet, getting shunned on the White House lawn.
- The 31st edition of the Vancouver Playhouse International Wine Festival brings a lot more BC wines than the early days.
- Vancouver's Market by Jean-Georges offers merely "ho-hum food"?
- A French-Moroccan Menu: Leeks Vinaigrette, Chicken Thighs with Peppery Salsa, Israeli Couscous with Spinach and Garlic Cream, Blood Orange and Pistachio Salad.
- Kaizen Sushi -- a new mid-range Toronto sushi joint hoping to beat the cash-strapped times.
- Beppi Crosariol discusses seasonal wines and a time for Chablis.
Purple Velvet Torte - Feast Your Eyes
Guess what this purple velvet torte doesn't contain? Flour. Guess what it does contain? Beets. That's right, this drool-worthy specimen from Elana's Pantry is not only gluten-free, but it actually gives you a dose of veg. Elana says this is her second attempt at "hiding" beets in treats, and that the torte passed her picky husband's taste test with flying colors. The torte is sweetened with agave nectar and moistened with grapeseed oil. As a mild beet-phobe myself, I'm desperately curious to see how well the beet-y taste is hidden.
Box Lunch: Curlicues
For your lunchtime pleasure, I'm presenting a series of my favorite bento boxes. Bento are Japanese home-prepared meals served in special boxes, usually eaten for lunch at work or school. These days, bento enthusiasts from all over the world share their creations on Flickr.
This bento, from I Love Egg, is called "fun with the nori cutter." It features beet flowers, a rice star, celery, frozen cherries, fried pork, mashed parsnip dyed pink with beet juice in a geometric mold, all adorned with little nori curlicues cut with a craft store paper cutter.
In Season: Roasted beet salad with oranges and beet greens
If your CSA share has been anything like mine this season, you've gotten bundle upon bundle of beets. I've exhausted all my standard recipes and barely made a dent. What to do with all of those beets? How about a simple and hearty salad! Roasting beets allows all the natural sugars to concentrate, creating a luscious, sweet and savory dish. Feel like giving it an extra pop? Add goat cheese and give your mouth the chance to take pleasure in all the textures of this salad.
Nutrition Fact: The delicate beet greens, which are an excellent source of potassium, folic acid, and magnesium, make this dish even more healthful.
Continue reading In Season: Roasted beet salad with oranges and beet greens
A beet salad for beet haters
Being part-Polish I should love borscht. The beety flavor, the gorgeous red hue. It's one of the big staples along with my beloved pierogies and galumpkis. But I just couldn't get into it. I began to feel bad about this distaste when my great aunt came to visit from Poland and cooked for us. Years later, I still fear the soup, but since I've been on a huge kick to remove as many foods on my no-eat list, I figured beets were a good area to tackle next. That, and I got some beautiful ones in my last organic food delivery.
I searched the web and settled on Roasted Beet Salad with Beet Greens, courtesy of Epicurious. In the comments, a few people swore that beet haters loved this, so I had to try. It's simple, almost fool-proof. I got antsy and nuked my beets half-way through (it was getting really late at night), and I am happy to say -- they were delicious. The vinaigrette cuts some of the beet flavor, and is paired wonderfully with the garlic, capers, feta, and beet greens. When you do get some of the strong, beet flavor, it's much easier to take, get used to, and like. In fact, I'm hooked on salad now. It hasn't even been a week, and I've already picked up more beets. For other beety options, try this beet and goat cheese salad, or this carrot and beet salad.
Step two: Borscht.
The Toronto Star in 60 seconds: Wild eating to summer whites
- Kim Honey learns about all the edible food out there to eat in the wild, and the particulars of slaughtering bunnies.
- More reasons to love summer: urban farming and rare beets.
- Delight in the inner flesh of a dragon fruit.
- Forget that typical round stuff. Here's a recipe for square sushi!
- Mouth-watering chef delicacies in Quebec City.
- Cheap and tasty reds: Mezzomondo 2007 Sangiovese Merlot, Pascual Toso 2005 Merlot, and Concha y Toro Trio 2006 Merlot-Carmenère-Cabernet Sauvignon.
- The ins and outs of ceviche, and where to taste it in Toronto.
- Summertime white wines: Cantina di Gambellara Prime Brume 2006 Soave Classico, Flat Rock Cellars 2007 Riesling, Omaka Springs 2007 Sauvignon Blanc, Novas Winemaker's Selection 2006 Chardonnay/Marsanne/ Viognier, and Tawes Sketches of Niagara 2006 Chardonnay.
Beet and goat cheese salad
When I was at the farmers market on Saturday with Sarah, I picked up a couple pounds of gorgeous-looking beets, without much of a plan other than they called out to me. Yesterday afternoon around 3 pm, they started to talk to me from the vegetable drawer and so I put a pot of water on the stove to boil them up. I had picked up a package of chevre at Trader Joe's and I started to imagine a beet and goat cheese salad with red onion, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
While I was in the middle of making some relatives showed up and my cooked beets spent about an hour gently cooling in their skins on the kitchen counter. When I finally got back to them, they slipped out of their skins easily. I cut them into half moons, tossed them with some great olive oil that somehow wandered into my parents' kitchen, the crumbled chevre, some slivered and soaked (in attempt to make them a little less pungent) red onion, a little balsamic, a bit of cracked black pepper and some salt.
I had intended to top it with some toasted walnuts, but people came in and started eating it before I got to that step. Instead I just cut off a hunk of sourdough from a loaf I bought at New Seasons earlier in the day and scooped up a plate of beet salad for myself. They were some of the best beets I'd ever had, sweet and earthy and so tender. If you have some beets laying around, this is a great way to make them appeal to a large swath of people, as no one who has passed through the house yet has been able to say no to it.
Borscht keeps the cold at bay
When my mom was pregnant with me, she craved borscht. She would buy the jars of Manishevitz brand borscht and drink it cold, straight from the container. It was a surprise to no one when I came into the world with an unreasonable love for beets. I like beets just about any way that they come, and borscht is one of my favorite ways to eat them. However, for someone who loves those red root vegetables as much as I do, you'd think that I'd then have a go-to recipe for the stuff. Sadly, you would be mistaken. I've tried many times and while I've always come up with something edible, I've never made it and then thought, "Gee, I love that."
However, on Sunday, Elise at Simply Recipes posted about borscht and included a recipe that she's adapted from Bon Appetit. It is based on beef broth and includes beets, carrots, potatoes and cabbage. It looks hearty, flavorful and deeply colored and is calling my name. I think I'll save this recipe for when I go to visit my parents in Oregon in a few weeks, to see if I can't shake my mother's attachment to the jarred version of this soup. With this recipe in hand, I don't think it should be hard.
It's hot and can't be beet
Beets are the new black. Research surveys show that beet salads are one of the biggest new restaurant trends. Whether red, gold, or candy striped, these wholesome and tasty root veggies are showing up on restaurant menus across the country and they are HOT, or cold, as the case may be. Folks these days don't make use of beets as much as our grandparents did, and many people haven't even tasted a beet that didn't come from a can. I know it wasn't until a few years ago that I started cooking up dishes using fresh beets, and I was amazed at how good they are.
One of my favorite dishes to make is a simple and absolutely wonderful roasted root vegetable soup. I think it may have been in Food & Wine magazine where I came across the original recipe, but after making it a few times and tweaking it I came up with the following. I like to serve this creamy, rich soup in coffee cups or tiny espresso cups as the first dish when I have a sit down dinner, or pass them around during a cocktail hour for a quick pick me up with a different twist.
Tofu or not Tofu: The Boston Globe in 60 seconds
Like Tofu? Here are some recipes, including Tofu with Shiitakes and Bok Choy.- A profile of three Boston area companies making boutique wines.
- Oktoberfest isn't just a beer festival, it's a style of drink.
- What, pizza again for dinner? How about making calzones for the family instead?
- A cool project: recreating recipes from old notebooks, scraps of paper, and journals.
- The advantage of a Dutch oven.
- This week's recipes: Noodles with Pork and Hot Bean Sauce, Salt-roasted Beets, and Chocolate Graham Toffee Fingers.
Common Red Beet-- chock full
The common red beet is heavy in minerals like iron and potassium along with flavinoids; its red pigment betaine accounts for this. Red beets should be eaten raw in combination with other vegetables, preferably. Don't think the beet is a boring old veggie...it's your friend, it's cheap, plentiful, and when put it through a good juicer along with some carrots and broccoli, your digestive tract will thank you. Women especially benefit from the high iron content, pregnant or not. Everyone benefits from the folate, manganese, potassium, iron, and low calories.Is golden the hip color for veggies?
If you thought color trends were just for clothes and appliances, think again. This year's color is "golden," and it's showing up all over your produce department, from bell peppers to heirloom tomatoes to ... beets? The golden beet is "buttery sweet" and its flavor is enhanced with slow roasting or pickling. Although the golden beet was bred in the 1800s, it has only become popular recently. It has a limited growing season, so you'll have to snap it up, along with its "gold-veined," and vitamin-packed, greens.
What Can I Get You Folks? - Server Revenge
Reality-Show Celebrities Serve Up Chef Curtis Stone's 'Hundred-Dollar Burger'
Foods Celebrity Chefs Hate
