"red onion" news and stories

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.

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There have been plenty of California blood oranges in the markets lately, so this is the second week in a row that I've made this very simple blood orange salad. The basic version that I make at home and usually see in restaurants includes blood oranges and thinly sliced red onion, garnished with cracked pepper and good olive oil. I added some torn Italian parsley and, this time, some thinly sliced hearts of palm. If you're unfamiliar with hearts of palm, the flavor is mild and fresh, a bit like an artichoke, and the texture is similar to barely cooked asparagus. As the name implies, these are the edible cores of the cabbage palm. You'll generally find them canned, among the other canned vegetables. As they're fairly mild, they work well with the acidity of the oranges and the richness of the olive oil. This is a great way to start a number of different menus, but I think it works particularly well as foil to richer dishes like stews or braised meats.