Tag Archives: crunchy

With Every Beet of My Heart

13 Saturday Feb 2016

Posted by in Fall, Miscellany, Red, Roots and Tubers, Spring, Winter

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Confession time: I’m a convert.

Red BeetIf you can believe it (I can’t), I once said (on this very blog!) and I quote: “Some raw food types grate them into obscurity or juice them in order to eat them, but I don’t recommend it. ”

Ah, the ignorance of youth! Or at least the fears of a beet newbie. You know what’s awesome? You know what is possibly the greatest salad in the history of salads?

Raw Beet Salad.

Raw.

DSCF8560

Bloody.

grated beetsRed.

Cut beetrootBeets.beetroot closeupI know! I astound even myself. Or, rather, Mark Bittman does.

Red beets are indeed bloody and gory (and, not to be too déclassé, but seriously – put a note in the bathroom that you ate beets yesterday. Seriously. Especially if you have kids. You’ll think someone’s hemorrhaging. Everyone thinks someone’s hemorrhaging the first time you eat a lot of beets. If you’re pregnant? Forget about it. You’ll be on the way to the emergency room before you remember that you’re only chock-full of vitamins, or, ahem, no longer quite so chock full of vitamins). But the redder they are, the sweeter they are, and though I used to prefer Golden Beets and I still think Candy Cane Beets are just the cutest, if you’re going raw, you’ve got to go red, baby.

DSCF8566This isn’t just because of the taste, though it’s mostly that. The other reason you should go for the red beets (or beetroot if you’re British) is that the other kinds change color really darn quickly. We’ve tried the below salad with golden beets, and they turn greenish-mud and look kind of like a bowl of vomit. The white parts of the chioggia beets turn brown, and when grated you lose all their cuteness (though they might work okay if mandolined and eaten quickly – I can’t say, I haven’t tried it).

But the red beets – grate them or slice them thin enough, and you have sweet, crunchy, earthy, beets coupled with a fresh and bright dressing, offset by the smooth, tangy creaminess of little dabs of goat cheese and rounded out by hearty, silky walnuts. It’s perfection.

Valentine’s Day, however, deserves a little something extra. {Drumroll, please}

Heart Beet SaladRed is great; hearts are better.

Heart Beet Salad
adapted from Mark Bittman’s Raw Beet Salad

I’ve adapted this recipe for 2 adults and 2 young children, because that’s what I serve – If it makes too much for a romantic dinner for two, save the hearts you mangled and the parts you trimmed off the beetroot, grate or slice thin, mix with the dressing, and store in the fridge. It will keep for a couple of days – but mix with the dressing first. Unlike leaf salads in which the dressing makes it soggy, the vinegar here helps keep the beets from losing their color – but only for a day or two. Then they’ll get soggy, too.

Dressing:
1-2 large shallots, thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1-2 teaspoon Dijon mustard, or to taste
1/2-1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1-2 tablespoons champagne vinegar (the original recipe uses sherry vinegar; we prefer champagne; red wine vinegar is too strong)
1-2 sprig fresh tarragon, minced
1/8-1/4 cup chopped parsley leaves (a nicely-sized ripped off bunch)
*the measurements vary depending on how much dressing you like. Start on the low end of all if you’re not sure or don’t like everything drowned. Make the higher amount if you don’t mind leftover dressing, and then dress to taste.

2-3 medium beets – if you’re making hearts, the more spherical, the better
1-2 inch log of goat cheese, crumbled
1/4 c walnuts, crumbled

In a small bowl, whisk together salt, pepper, mustard, oil, and vinegar. Taste to adjust seasonings (keep in mind you’ll be adding herbs – taste for ratios of oil to vinegar, and saltiness, not so much for exact flavor). Stir in shallots. Avoid mixing herbs into dressing to save a step – the whisking and tossing bruises the leaves and makes them lose a little of their floral sweetness.

To make beet hearts:

Peel beets. Cut off the top and bottom where the greens sprout and where it gets spindly – you want a nice-looking circle with two flat sides.

beet circlePlacing one flat side down, cut in half (lengthwise if it’s not a perfect circle). Working with one half-circle, cut the bottom round edge off at a diagonal – this will be the bottom edge of half a heart. beet heart

Trim the top edge to remove the corner and round it out.

Beet Heart Half Repeat with the other half-circle.

Beet Heart CompleteTurn round side facing up and slice into very thin slices. Place two halves next to each other to form hearts on the plate.

My heart on a plate

Crumble goat cheese and walnuts on top, drizzle with dressing, and sprinkle with minced herbs.

Grated Beet SaladIf you want to just make the grated salad version:

Peel the shallot and the beets and put them through the shredder blade of the food processor, or pulse to grate. Don’t overprocess.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the dressing, leaving out the herbs. Toss the dressing with the shredded beets, then toss briefly with herbs. If you’re making it for a crowd, you can sprinkle the goat cheese and walnuts on top now, and serve, but if you’re making individual plates, dish up the beets first, then crumble goat cheese and walnuts on top so that the beets don’t turn the cheese pink. (Vegans: the original has no goat cheese and is also awesome.)

Info on peeling, seasonality, etc. is the same as Golden Beets.

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A note: It takes a lot of time and effort to create these posts. I share the information I’ve found because I want to be helpful, but I’m also a professional writer, and other people pay me for my work. Please, please, STOP STEALING MY POSTS. I don’t disable copying because the majority of lovely, honest people who come around might want to copy and paste the recipes to their computers – but I also really, really don’t like thievery. If you find my information useful, please give credit where it’s due, and post a link to my page! The vegetables, the universe, karma, and your mother will thank you. And I won’t have to get all high-security up in here or shut the whole thing down.

 

 

 

Eating the Vines (aka Pea Tendrils)

27 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Beans and Peas, Flowers, Green, Leafy, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables

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True Confessions time:pea tendrilsI despise peas.  They are the eyeballs of the vegetable world, quite literally – tiny, pasty eyeballs that show up to ruin pea plantotherwise lovely dishes, like carbonara and shrimp with lobster sauce and, worst of all, the ubiquitous fish and chips “with mushy minted peas.”  How on earth does anyone think that sounds the least bit appetizing???

But I digress.  Spring as they may hearken, it will be a long time before you see a post about English peas on this blog, which is why I felt something of a personal victory in purchasing pea tendrils at the market on Sunday.

I’m not sure if they’re the tendrils of shelling peas or pod peas (HUGE difference to pea haters, by the way – snap and sugar peas are just fine, thank you), or if they just mix them all in the bin and it doesn’t matter, but to purposefully (and rather expensively) purchase things that might have some connection to the peas I deplore is dedication to experimentation, my friends.

curling tendrilsIn short: slap my ass and call my Sally.  Or whatever the expression is.

Yup, you heard it here first: they’re delightful!  I assumed they would taste sort of like peas, so I mixed in the leftover nettle greens I had on hand as well just in case I hated them, but I needn’t have, and maybe even shouldn’t have, as the two greenspea tendrils vines have very different flavors and yes, my plate seriously resembled lawn clippings.  But the pea tendrils had a delicate nuttiness, a vegetative crunch without the grassy flavor so common in most greens, an underlying mild sweetness, and tasted just simply fresh.  It was spring on a plate.  Add to that the graceful curve of the vines’ tiny fingers flash-sauteed in hot oil and fresh garlic, the bright deep green, the shy head of a white flower poking out from a tiny swaddle of leaves and the entire thing took on something of a gentile air.  I wanted to slow sip pea flowera pale sparkling wine while discussing poetry in a cool mid-afternoon sun.  (Instead of shoveling food into my face before I pass out from exhaustion and drinking my wine like it’s shots of tequila while watching DVR’ed shows with closed captioning because the kids are asleep and my house is too small?  Yes.)

Pea tendrils are the young shoots of pea plants, which makes me so happy because snow peas are one of the few things that I have grown successfully more than once, except I forget to water them and they never produce pods.  But now I can just harvest the vines! pea vine climbing The older they get, the tougher, and some people say to ditch the thicker stems, but I used everything in the bag I bought and the thicker stems were simply slightly crispier – mine were probably young enough that nothing had gotten woody or chewy yet.

Look for young, spry-looking pea shoots without wilt or yellowing.  Many people chop them before cooking, and if you purchased long strings of them, you probably should, but my farmer sold them in roughly 3-inch long pieces, and they were perfectly manageable on a fork and retained their beautiful curls on the plate – half the fun in the first place.  The best method for cooking them seems to be exactly what I found:  very hot oil, throw them in for a quick saute and a minute later add garlic until you can smell it (the whole process goes fast – maybe even just three minutes start to finish), put on a plate with salt, and enjoy.  People that like spices add red pepper flakes, too.  I tossed mine with some pasta for a vegetarian dinner.  You might also serve them with a fried or poached egg.  You see what I’m going for here?  Keep it simple, folks.  Simple and spring-like.  And if you have time for a little poetry, let me know how that goes.  I’m jealous already.

curling tendrilsTrim? Conventional wisdom says that if you can see flowers, remove the stems nearby as they’ll be too thick to be appetizing, some even include the tendrils.  I think the tendrils are pretty and had no problem with thicker stems, but if you’re eating raw I would follow the advice.
Edible when raw?  Yes, but trim off the thicker stems.
Worth the price of organic? Hard to say.  Peas are traditionally considered a “clean” food, but I think that’s because you toss the pod.  I would definitely go organic for the tendrils – they just seem to invite pesticide residue based on how they grow.
Best with:  Simple, spring-like flavors – fresh garlic, lemon, radishes, eggs, plain grains – brown rice is as nutty as I’d go; heavy starches like bulgur or barley or beans would overpower the delicacy of the shoots, in my opinion.
In Season:   Spring
How to Store: They don’t keep well.  Use the day you buy them, the next day at the most.  Store in the fridge if you’re keeping them at all, but honestly, they wilt very fast.

Brussels Sprouts

12 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by in Fall, Green, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables, Winter

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This is how pathetic my life has become: when my husband goes out of town, I live it up by eating brussels sprouts.  Seriously. (Did you know there was an ‘s’ on the end?  No?  Me neither.  I mean, I know they were named for the city, but I always assumed the vegetable was “brussel sprouts.”  Ah the wonders of google’s super-condescending Did you mean brussels sprouts? as if google was channeling the annoying grammar kid in grade school…)brussels sproutsBut they’re lovely little nuggets of nutty vegetable goodness and he hates them, or did.  Conventional wisdom (read: the label on the bag when you buy them at the store) suggests popping them in the microwave for a few minutes with a hole cut in the corner for venting, and voila! Delicious veggies!  So here’s a tip: NEVER TAKE COOKING ADVICE FROM A PLASTIC BAG.  Even if it does have halved sproutfriendly-looking exclamation points and promising adjectives.

Brussels sprouts microwaved in the bag taste like, well, vegetables microwaved in a bag.  They’re sorta steamed and sorta healthy-tasting and sorta mushy and definitely edible and definitely fast, but when all is said and done they taste a little…sad.  And definitely need to be smothered in soy sauce.

Like any somewhat tough, somewhat bitter vegetable, the key to brussels sprouts is to roast them.  Sweeter roots and tubers like sweet potatoes and beets can be cut thin and survive a quick 20 minute roast and come out just fine, but with brussels sprouts?  You’ve got to roast the crap out of them.  trim

 

Cut off the ends,
trimmed v untrimmed
half sprout

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cut in half,

 

 

 

toss with a bit of olive oil, and pop them in a 400 oven for at least 30 minutes.  About halfway through cooking time, shake the pan to toss them around a bit, and then back in they go.  When they’re done, they’ll be absolute mush in the center, which sounds really unappetizing, but what happens is that all the bitterness dissolves away and the residual sugars caramelize in the heat and the mush you’re left with is a little sweet and a little caramelly and a little nutty and tastes awesome with anything with a little strength behind its flavor – red onion, goat cheese, walnuts, steak, or just very nice sea salt.  They’re very earthy when they’re left almost whole like this, and would probably be wonderful smoked.

shredded brussels sproutsBut if you don’t have time for a long oven roast, there’s another secret that we only recently discovered that makes them even better, and way faster and easier: shred them.  If you have a food processor, run them through the slicing blade.  The resulting pieces are thin enough to pop into any pan for a quick saute or stir-fry with whatever else you’re serving, or even edible raw.  I’ve swapped them out for the kale in my raw kale salad with fantastic results, used them in place of the cabbage in a cole slaw (since brussels sprouts are really baby cabbages anyway), and tossed the shreds into a spinach salad with warm bacon dressing for a little vegetable variety.  When shredded, the natural bitterness is not nearly as noticeable, and just lends a little sharpness; if you’re cooking, you’ll get to that sweet nutty flavor ASAP instead of waiting for the slow roast.

A quick recipe:  Throw some sprouts and a shallot through the processor, and into a pan with a little olive oil.  Cook until everything is soft.  Feel free to leave it without turning much, ‘cuz you know I like my bitter things a little burned.  Splash some champagne vinegar on there if you have it, or cooking sherry, or rice vinegar, or apple cider vinegar.  Sprinkle with salt.  Eat by the panful because it really is that good.tiny cabbages

Look for tight sprouts without yellowing or curling on the outer leaves and few spots.  If you’re buying them from the market instead of the store, you may see them in their natural state, which is attached to a giant stalk, which looks bizarrely attractive but is inedible.  If you do buy them on the stalk, you can cut each sprout off with a knife, or just twist and pull each one off – the little stems that sometimes come off too are edible, but will need to be steamed or roasted very well first.  You get a lot more bang for your buck when you buy on the stalk, but a lot more work, and frankly, my fridge isn’t big enough to hold it…so no pics.  Sorry.  When we move to a bigger house and get a bigger kitchen, I swear I’ll buy a giant specimen just for you.

Trim? Yes.  Slice off the bottom brown edge.  Some people say to just put an ‘x’ in the base, but that seems like more work to me and I don’t like tough stems.  Remove any wilted leaves.
Edible when raw?  Yes, but better sliced thin or shredded first.
Worth the price of organic? Apparently not, though I would have thought otherwise.  Organic brussels sprouts are particularly hard to grow, so they’re not that common, and because each little sprout is packed so tightly, they don’t harbor a lot of bad stuff.  So give ’em a good wash and save your pennies.
Best with:  Strong flavors with a little sweetness that can stand up to the bitter earthiness but bring out the sweetness of the sprout – shallots, lemon, soft cheeses, pine nuts, walnuts, bacon/ham/piggies…  Strong flavors that have a bitter edge, like marjoram, turmeric, or even my beloved garlic, can heighten the sulfuric edge, making them taste a little like rotten eggs if you’re not careful.
In Season:  Fall through Spring.
How to Store: In the fridge, in a produce box or loosely sealed plastic bag, they should keep for ten days to 2 weeks.  If they start to yellow at the edges, peel off the outer leaves and eat within the next day or two.

Breakfast Radishes

09 Saturday Jun 2012

Posted by in Red, Roots and Tubers, Spring, Vegetables, White, Winter

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Radishes for breakfast?

Nuh-uh.  Me neither.  But I didn’t think I liked radishes particularly until I tried these babies.

Radishes come in a lot more varieties than I ever gave them credit for.  I always thought of them as the little red spheres that Peter Rabbit got in trouble for and that cafeterias thinly-sliced into cheap salads, and they are, but it turns out they come in white and purple and in between – watermelon radishes are whitish-green on the outside and red in the center – and in spheres and oblong and big like cucumbers, and that’s not even including varieties like daikon and other Asian relatives.

If the only kind that you’re familiar with are the little red salad spheres, you probably think of them as crunchy, spicy, and a little useless, and in general I agree.  Breakfast radishes, on the other hand, are lovely.

They’re smaller and oblong, red from stem almost to the end where they are daintily tipped in white.  Look for ones with nice healthy greens attached.  They should be firm, and the smaller the sweeter, though the teeny ones rot faster.  When they start to turn, they get squishy from the inside out, so the middle will cave before the ends will shrivel.  Good ones look and feel a lot like small fingers.  Sorry, but they do.  If one of them grazes you while sticking out of your straw bag, you’ll jump a foot into the air.  It’s creepy!  Or maybe I’m just jumpy.

But they’re not nearly as sharp-tasting as the supermarket variety, which gives them a fresh, watery flavor – like a pickle without the vinegar.  They have a nice subtle bite so that something’s going on, but if you cook them down, it’s slight enough that it will practically disappear, which can be good when you have too many in the fridge that you don’t want to waste.  Think very, very mild horseradish.

They really shine, however, in simplicity.  Chop them into chunks, drizzle with olive oil and chunky salt, and eat them with your fingers while you sit on the porch on a warm evening with a glass of wine or beer.  Or slice them thin, layer on really excellent bread spread thick with a good butter and sprinkle very lightly with salt.  That’s it.  Cream cheese? Unnecessary.  Spices?  Not here.  Just crispy, crunchy deliciousness that tastes exactly like Spring should taste.

P.S. Don’t throw out the greens!  Use them like you would any mildly bitter green – beet, chard, mustard – and toss with pasta.  More on the greens later…

Trim? Trim off the root hairs or the really spindly long root at the end, and take a little off the top.  If you’re saving the greens, chop them off about 1/2 inch from the root as soon as you get them home – they’ll continue to feed the radish and will wilt faster.  If you’re not saving them, leave them on to help the root stay fresh a little longer.
Edible when raw?  Yes.  Best when raw, in my opinion, though cooked can go in almost anything as filler.
Worth the price of organic?  Probably, and easy to find if you don’t mind them looking a little ugly.  Radishes are one of the key “trap crops” used by organic farmers to lure bugs away from more desirable fare, so plenty of growers have radishes by the bushel-full…Trouble is, they’re trap crops.  They’re gonna look a little worse for wear unless the farmer is doing something to protect them better.  Ignore the bug holes and chomp away!
In season: Spring.  Radishes like a cold snap- it makes them sweeter- and they’re usually best when dug up before the soil gets too consistently hot.  In L.A., I don’t like to buy radishes much past June unless we’ve had a very mild Spring, but in the rest of the country you may be good straight through until August.
Best with: almost nothing – a little oil or butter, a little salt, and nothing else to compete.
How to Store: In the fridge they’ll keep a week or longer, but they will get squidgy about the edges or soft in the center if they go too long.  If they’re no longer firm but not really soft, toss them into any sort of stir-fry/saute-type meal and they’ll cook down and taste just fine.

More Alien Babies!

08 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in Fall, Green, Miscellany, Spring, Vegetables, White

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Only this time they’re delicious.

I love fennel bulbs, even though sometimes the flavor of the seed or stalks can overpower dishes.  This happens a lot with soup, I think, but if you’re going to buy sweet sausages from the Italian place that makes them in-house (and why wouldn’t you?  Seriously, they’re delicious.  Which Italian place you ask?  ALL OF THEM.), buy the ones with fennel seed rather than without. 

I kind of feel like fennel is going to grow talons and attack me, but that’s probably because no matter how deep I stuff it into my bag at the market, fronds poke out from among the lettuces and apples and tickle me as I walk, completely freaking me out.   They will also attack you every time you open your fridge.  Those stalks are pretty mischievous.  Or under orders from their alien overlords.  Luckily, it’s the benevolent bulb you want to eat, not the tough, stringy stalks.  Some stores and sellers sell fennel pre-trimmed, but I don’t really recommend buying it that way since the cut edges get dry and shriveled pretty quickly.  If you’re into presentation, save a few of the more delicate-looking fronds to sprinkle on top of whatever you end up making with it.  If you’re thrifty, save the stalks to add to other vegetable leavings to make a vegetable stock, or use them in poaching liquid for fish or chicken.  They can overpower if they’re the main ingredient, but as an addition they’ll add a fresh almost grassy flavor that guests will find hard to place but can really make something simple taste complex.

If you’re not going to eat it right away, store it with stalks on so that it doesn’t get dried out, but don’t store it too long.  If it starts to go old, the bulb will get slightly shriveled with brown edges.  If the outer layers are too dry or brown, you can peel them off and still eat the bulb underneath, but fresher is obviously better.

Cut the stalks right where they meet the bulb – basically cut off anything green. 

Trim the tough bottom part of the fennel as well.  There will be something of a disc in the center, depending on how big your bulb is. 

This is the core.  Some people keep trimming and throw out anything solid-looking, or cut the bulb in half at this point and ditch the core; I don’t mind it as long as it’s not too tough.  I just chop the entire bulb into fourths or sixths if I’m cooking it and it will soften up, or slice it very thin if I’m slicing it to eat raw.

The interior of the bulb resembles celery.  It has a slightly tougher outer layer with a more succulent pocketed inner layer.  Pockets of deliciousness, that is!  

If you remember biology, it really should be used for the picture of cambium in textbooks.  Xylem and phloem anyone?  No?   I’m not a fan of celery, licorice, or dill, so I personally resent the comparisons on fennel’s behalf.  Fennel is related to all three of these stronger-tasting plants, and while it’s taste does closely resemble anise or licorice, it’s not nearly that potent.  If you like licorice, you may either love fennel or find it too bland.  If you don’t like any of the above flavors, like me, you may still love fennel.  It tastes like Spring.  It has a great crunch and enough moisture that it automatically tastes refreshing.  It’s slightly sweet, very slightly grassy, with just a tiny hint of licorice-like sharpness.   Just to clarify, the kind of fennel I’m talking about here is Florence fennel – it’s been cultivated to have this big delicious bulb.  Other types of fennel, including wild, have a slightly sharper taste and slightly different uses, though they’re just different variants of the same species.

There are lots of different ways to prepare fennel, both raw and cooked, but my absolute favorite is also extremely easy.  (You may be noticing a trend with my recipes.  I’m lazy.  I have a toddler.  I own a mismatched set of skillets I bought at Marshall’s and one nice omelette pan we received as a wedding gift that I subsequently used metal utensils on and ruined.  I don’t really do complicated.)  Slice the fennel as thin as you can without injuring yourself.  If you have a mandoline, your fennel will look much prettier than mine.  Break up the slices (they’ll come apart when you pick them up) so that you can pile them artfully on a plate.  Drizzle with olive oil.  Squeeze the juice of half a lemon on top.  Pick out the seeds that inevitably fell into your salad.  Top with a tablespoon (who are we kidding here?  I use more like half a cup.  It’s cheese!) shaved or grated parmesan (use fresh here, not the stuff in the green can) and sprinkle with a little chunky sea salt.  If you’re fancy, top with those saved feathery fronds so it looks pretty.  That’s it.  It doesn’t look very glamorous, but I could eat this salad almost every day.  Yes, it’s topped with half a pound of cheese (did I say half a cup earlier?  I probably lied), but if you have more self-control or perhaps more lactose-intolerance than I do, it doesn’t have to be.  It’s crisp, it’s summery, it goes with almost everything, and fennel is supposed to aid digestion and have other magical herbal properties including lots of vitamins, so that cancels out all the cheese I just put on there.  Isn’t that how vitamins work?

Peel? Trim.  All the parts are technically edible, but it’s the bulb that’s the tastiest.  Trim off the stalks and tough bottom part, and peel off any outer old layers if necessary.
Edible seed? Yes, though you won’t see it on the bulbs you’ll buy at the market.  Fennel seed, pollen, and other varieties will be the subject of another post.
Edible when raw?  Yes.  Raw or cooked are both delicious.
Worth the price of organic?  Probably.  The bulb sits just above ground, so it gets contact with both sprayed-on pesticides and things sitting on the soil.  Insects don’t love fennel (in fact, some gardeners use it as a natural repellant), so it shouldn’t need tons of pesticides to grow well anyway.
In season: Fennel is a cooler weather crop, so you’ll find it in Spring and Autumn.  Spring fennel is usually a little sweeter than Autumn fennel, since an unexpected heat wave can make the plant bolt, making it sharper. 
Best with: lemon, fish, chicken – milder flavors let the subtler bulb shine. 
How to Store: In the fridge for up to a week, though if you keep it that long you’ll have some old layers to peel off.
Note on Growing Your Own: Almost every plant on Earth hates fennel, so if you decide to grow it yourself, put it in a pot or raised bed alone, or plant it in a separate area from other plants, especially fruits and vegetables.  If you plant it anywhere near dill, they’ll cross-pollinate and neither will be the flavor you want.