Moroccan Beet Salad with Cinnamon

In my last trip to the grocery store I decided that I needed to buy more vegetables that get overlooked in our apartment.  I wasn't looking for vegetables that we never make, but for vegetables that we make from time to time, but with no real regularity.  Broccoli rabe was an obvious candidate, as was cabbage.  And I threw in some beets for good measure because I love them and as far as I am concerned, we don't make them enough.  But somehow none of our usual recipes appealed.  So I decided to try this recipe for Moroccan Beet Salad with Cinnamon from Serious Eats.  I wasn't sure if I would be serving the beets by themselves or over a bed of greens, but as soon as I took my first bite of the beets I knew I wanted to serve them as a salad.  So I threw together a quick salad with what we had in the fridge - a few large handfuls of mixed greens, toasted hazelnuts and some Coach Farm goat ricotta.  And I topped it all with the beets and their dressing.  Speaking of the dressing, it worked really nicely as salad dressing - I loved the aroma and warmth of the cinnamon.  I had never paired cinnamon and beets together before but I liked the combination a lot.  I have never added sugar to my beets before, but I thought together with the lemon juice it amped up the sweetness just enough without making the beets too sweet.  The tangy goat ricotta was a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the dressing, although you could use any number of cheeses instead of goat ricotta (which I admit is not exactly the easiest thing to find at the grocery store).  The hazelnuts provided a really nice crunch, although it wouldn't be the end of the world if you omited them in the future.  And I'm sure some toasted pinenuts would work nicely too and would give the salad a nice buttery flavor.  Obviously you could serve the beets as is, without the rest of the salad, but I thought they were really nice this way. 

Recipe after the jump!

Farro Pasta with Roasted Beets, Beet Greens and Pine Nuts

We got the idea for this pasta as a combination of two recipes that I found on Epicurious - Farfalle with Golden Beets, Beet Greens and Pine Nuts and Farro Spaghetti, Beets, Brown Butter, Poppy Seeds.   I wanted to make an easy vegetarian dish that would take advantage of the beet greens on the cute little beets that I picked up at the farmers' market today.  Usually the greens on beets from the super market look a little pathetic.  But these were bright green and lovely.  I had another beet recipe for Maple Horseradish Glazed Beets that I really wanted to make, but we ended up going for this one because the other one didn't use the greens.

The thing I liked most about the recipe was that all of the ingredients had a purpose.  Every element was a crucial component - nothing felt gratuitous.  As we were eating I mentioned to Alex that toasted pine nuts often feel gratuitous to me, but in this dish the texture and buttery, rich flavor they added were just what the dish needed to elevate itself.  The sweetness of the carameliontrzed onions and the roasted beets contrasts nicely with the salty, nutty cheese and the slightly nutty farro spaghetti.  The beet greens lend a little volume (plus some vitamins) and have a very mild flavor similar to Swiss chard.  I thought they might be a bit more bitter, but I'm glad that they weren't.  Another plus with this recipe is how easy it is to prepare.  It is a little time-intensive since you have to roast the beets and caramelize the onions and both of those things always take forever, but it doesn't require a ton of effort or ingredients to produce.  And if you use red beets, the pasta ends up looking all beautifully pink and delicious.  In my opinion that's another reason to make the dish.

Recipe after the jump!

Roast Beet Salad with Ash-Coated Goat Cheese

So this beet salad was an amalgamation of a couple of different recipes that Alex found on About.com.  I have to admit that I wasn't thrilled with it for a number of reasons.  First and foremost, the goat cheese we bought was just way too strong.  Its flavor overpowered everything else in the dish.  You literally couldn't taste anything (except the onions).  Alex said that as far as he is concerned, we have made better beet salads and worse beet salads.  In his mind this came in somewhere in the middle.  In mine, it was near the bottom.  As far as I am concerned, the most successful recipes we have made were Roasted Beets with Lebneh and Mint, Co.'s Roasted Beet Salad with Arugula and Pepitas, and Roasted Beets with Cumin and Mint.  I'm not sure exactly where this one would fall, but I'm thinking if it's not the worst, it's among the worst.  Sorry hon - I guess we will have to agree to disagree on this one.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Beet Salad with Goat Chese and Pistachios

Let's see...  What is there to say about our newest take on beet salad?  We are still in our vegetarian kick, so I wanted to do a hearty salad for dinner with some stracchiatella soup and beet salad sounded like the perfect option.  The funny thing is that we made almost this exact meal (with a slightly different beet salad and homemade chicken stock on the blog almost two years ago).  And in a lot of ways, I preferred that meal - particularly the sweet and spicy candied pecans, the homemade chicken stock for the soup.  I was expecting more sweetness from the roasted beets here, but once I tossed them with the dressing all of that wonderful beet sweetness was obscured.  Granted, grocery store beets in the middle of winter are never quite as sweet as beets are when they are in season, but I tasted the roasted beets before and after adding the dressing so I can definitively say that the dressing definitely masked some of their natural sweetness.  I think beets go wonderfully with goat cheese and this salad was no exception.  The pistachios were an interesting touch as well.  I love roasted salted pepitas with beet salad and candied walnuts or pecans, but I have never tried pistachios.  They are a milder, slightly sweeter alternative, but I might go back to the candied nuts or pepitas. 

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Beets with Lebneh and Mint

Last night I was trying to think of a way to use up my beets from the CSA and I kept thinking about the lebneh I had left in the fridge from our Grilled Eggplant with Lebneh.  I really liked the combination of the garlic in the lebneh with the fresh mint.  And I thought that it would work with some roasted beets, but I wasn't sure so I checked Google.  When I Googled I found a variety of recipes including beets and yogurt - most of which wanted you to grate the beets and mix with plain yogurt.  That reminded me a little too much of a coleslaw and the proportions of yogurt to beet sounded off to me, so I decided to just wing it.  I found a Madhur Jaffrey recipe on Epicurious that called for a pinch of cayenne so I appropriated that idea and started cooking.  And man, that cayenne was genius.  But I have to give us credit for coming up with such a genius idea in the first place.  Alex actually said that this was one of his favorite beet recipes ever.  Not that we make beets that often, but I still consider that to be a serious accomplishment.  Once you stir it all together, the tartness and coolness of the lebneh was the perfect contrast to the heat of the cayenne and the sweetness of the beets.  And then there was the brightness of fresh mint and the hint of fresh garlic.  Yum.  It was just really good.  And the bright fuchsia color was just beautiful.  In fact, it was so good (and so pretty) that I even considered stealing the last bite away from Alex and eating it myself.  But I didn't.  I'm a good wife like that.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens

 

This is another recipe that was inspired by my CSA haul.  I'm really trying to make sure that we use all of the wonderful produce that I picked up so we built this meal around beet salad.  I proposed making Zucchini Cornbread to go with the beet salad.  Alex wasn't a fan of that idea.  Then I proposed making fried green tomatoes.  He didn't shoot that one down, but he didn't jump up and down in joy either.  And then I proposed making a Cherry Tomato and Lemon Salad.  Alex's response was "a salad with a salad?"  So he clearly wasn't a huge fan of that idea either.  But I was determined to make this beet salad so I stuck with it.  How's that for perseverance?

Generally when we make beets we either serve them over some mixed greens with goat cheese and nuts as a beet salad, or we serve them solo.  It has never occurred to me before to mix them with the beet greens.  When I buy beets at the grocery store the first thing I usually do when I get home is chop off the greens and throw them away.  Granted, the beets at the grocery store are nowhere near as fresh as the ones I picked up from Holton Farms the other day.  The greens on this bunch actually looked wonderful.  So I was excited to try them out.  Unfortunately we didn't have enough beet greens to make a dish with just the greens (unless of course I only wanted enough for each of us to have 2 forkfuls), so I had to serve the greens with something else.  I found a few recipes that mixed together the beet greens with the beets themselves and that seemed like the logical way to go.  So I found a recipe that did just that.  I really liked the combination of the sweet onions, beets, beet greens and oranges.  I have never mixed any of those ingredients together before so it was a totally new flavor profile for me.  Our orange was kind of anemic.  I really wish it had more bold citrus flavor, but I guess that's my fault for picking out a mediocre out of season orange.  Even with an anemic orange, the flavor was quite nice.  You want to cut the onions fairly thin so they can't overwhelm the other subtler flavors in the dish.  But when everything is in balance it is truly lovely.

Recipe after the jump!

Beets in Vinaigrette

Sometimes you need to mix things up a little.  My favorite recipe for beets is Roasted Beets with Cumin and Mint.  It's fresh, savory and delicious.  But the flavors are pretty distinct and the dish doesn't go with everything.  I also love a good arugula salad with ricotta salata and some roasted beets.  But sometimes you don't want that either.  To go with tonight's pasta I decided to just throw together a really simple beet salad, with simple flavors that would compliment, rather than compete with, our Pasta with Tuna Bottarga and Bread Crumbs.  While I prefer roasting beets, our beets were gigantic enough that I was worried that they would take forever to roast.  So I decided to go ahead and follow this recipe and simmer the beets instead.  You lose a little of the super sweet flavor of the beets when you simmer them instead of roasting them.  But this beets were a nice simple side dish, nothing spectacular, but nice nonetheless.  I liked the versatility of it.  And I liked the tartness of the vinegar in the dressing.  Overall, a nice dish.  As with the pasta, I would put it in the category of solid like.

Recipe after the jump!

Co.'s Roasted Beet Salad with Arugula and Pepitas

Ever since last weekend I have been thinking about attempting to make Co.'s beet salad at home.  I just thought that the combination of the peppery arugula, salty crunchy pepitas, scallions and sweet roasted beets was genius.  I'm not sure what kind of vinaigrette Co. used on the salad, but I thought that a bright lemony vinaigrette with some parsley would be the perfect complement.  So I threw the beets in the oven, ran to the grocery store to pick up more ingredients for my Zucchini Souffle, and made my version of the Co. beet salad.  And I thought that in terms of flavors, I really nailed it.  No, it doesn't replicate the salad from Co. exactly, but that wasn't what I was trying to do.  I just wanted to put something together that would be a nice addition to our salad repertoire - bright, fresh, healthy and delicious.  And I accomplished that.  I wish I had roasted the beets just a few minutes longer - ours were a little on the al dente side, but that was my bad.  I think that if the beets had been properly roasted they would have added a little extra sweetness to the salad that would have made the salad even more delicious.

Recipe after the jump!

Roasted Beets with Cumin and Mint

My favorite thing about this meal (aside from the fact that it is delicious) is that it used two ingredients from my CSA haul - beets and mint.  Beyond that, it is a wonderful variation from your standard roasted beets recipes.  I love the combination of the cumin and the mint to give the beets some flavors beyond just the sweetness typical of roasted beets.  The cumin gives the beets a wonderful smoky warmth, and the combination of the mint and lemon juice makes them fresh and vibrant.  My favorite way to serve these beets is over mixed spring greens or other tender greens with some nice goat cheese crumbled over the whole thing and some toasted walnuts for crunch.  If you use these beets as part of a salad you don't really need any additional dressing because the beets have plenty of dressing on their own (generally when I make these beets and serve them solo I cut down on the amount of dressing because it really is a lot). 

Recipe after the jump!

Salad with Roasted Beets, Goat Cheese and Candied Pecans

All of this glorious spring weather has made me yearn for salads.  Every time spring rolls around I go through a brief period of craving and eating salads by the bowlful.  Then it ends.  A diet built on salads certainly is not meant to last.  One of my favorite salads is mixed greens with roasted beets and goat cheese.  Another favorite is fatoosh - a Middle Eastern salad made with romaine, toasted pita bread, roma tomatoes, and cucumbers.  I briefly considered making fatoosh for dinner this evening, but the bodega was out of both roma tomatoes and English cucumbers.  Oh well.  After a delicious dinner at Joseph Leonard in the West Village last week where I tried their beet salad with goat cheese croquettes and olive toast, I have been going on and on about how we should make roasted beets at home.  Generally I have a no roasted beets at home policy because the whole process takes awhile and stains my hands bright magenta.  But policies like that are just meant to be broken.  Tonight seemed like the perfect opportunity.  

When we started thinking about a salad built around roasted beets, I knew I wanted to pair it with goat cheese and candied pecans.  I love the addition of candied pecans - sweet with honey, and spicy with cayenne - in almost any salad.  They make everything better.  Actually, I don't even need salad to eat them.  I can eat them by the handful all by themselves.  Yum.  Goat cheese and beets are such a natural pairing.  The sweetness of the beets, paired with the creaminess of the goat cheese is dynamite.  Throw in a nice red wine and sherry vinaigrette and some candied pecans and you have a fantastic salad.  We paired the salad with some stracciatella soup that we made with our homemade chicken stock.  I never thought that homemade chicken stock was worth the trouble when they sell perfectly decent stock in a box, but it really is worth it.  In the homemade stock you could actually taste the herbs (fresh thyme and parsley) and the other vegetables that I made the stock with.  And it tasted deeper and richer than the pre-made stocks.  I'm certainly not going to whip up a batch of homemade stock every time I need chicken stock to make soup, but this certainly won't be the last time I make homemade stock - particularly now that we know how to debone a whole chicken!

Recipe after the jump!