Beet Greens

The Saturday of KABOOM, I concocted this fabulous lunch.

I got a lovely bunch of beets at the Market, 4 large. I roasted them to make pickled beets for the KABOOM picnic. Had one beet left over.

The beets came with these lovely greens, and there they were on the counter. Those won’t keep for more than a day or so and then I’ll forget about them and they’ll get all slimy.

So I looked in Chez Panisse Vegetables for guidance. Alice does beet greens with pasta. She uses currents and stuff I don’t have or don’t want to mess with, but the key thing I was looking for in the recipe was “cook covered for 5 minutes.”

Lots of olive oil, an onion, beet greens, my LO beet and a splash of vinegar at the end. I tossed that with flat “ON LEE Oriental Style Egg Flavored Noodle, the kind that come in bunches and cook in three minutes. Fab!

That was so good, I did a riff on it the next week.

Beet Greens Too

I got beets again at the Mariquita stand at the Market. This time, they featured red, yellow and white beets. Two bunches, each with each color beet. The greens were big and scrumptious looking. I roasted the beets and will use them in a roasted beet salad later.

Beet Greens Too involved raisins, greens from the six beets, olive oil, fresh chopped red spring onion, garlic, toasted pine nuts, vinegar (I used Chinese Black Vinegar) and a leftover pork chop.

I covered the raisins with boiling water and let them soak while I toasted the pine nuts.

I washed the greens and cut the stems out, cut the leaves into chiffonade and chopped the stems into one inch pieces. I sautéed the onions until soft, added the garlic and stirred for a minute, and added the greens (with their clinging water), pine nuts and raisins; covered and cooked for 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, I diced the leftover pork chop and warmed it in olive oil. I plated the greens in flat, warm bowls and topped with the pork.

That’s lunch for two and that’s good eatin’.

Roasted Tri-Colored Beet Salad with Tomato Vinaigrette

A few days later, I addressed the roasted beets. When I had the Dean & Deluca Cookbook out for my swell Chinese Chicken Noodle Salad reference, I spied a recipe for Roasted Beet Salad with Mache & Yellow Tomato-Tarragon Vinaigrette. That looks good!

Now I’m ready to deal with the roasted beets. I stored the red beets separate from the white and yellow in the refrigerator. No bleeding of the colors allowed. I’m going to do a salmon fillet with mustard glaze for dinner and a beet salad will be the perfect accompaniment.

Well, the recipe called for yellow tomatoes, and they’re not yet in season. I couldn’t even find canned yellow tomatoes. I ended up using canned organic “California Grown” diced tomatoes, red ones. I also used dried tarragon instead of fresh, it calls for 30 leaves of fresh tarragon or 1 teaspoon of dry. I didn’t feel like buying a whole bunch of tarragon, when I don’t even have the proper tomatoes. Besides, we’re using tarragon vinegar.

So, what it boils down to is Roasted Tri-Colored Beet Salad with Tomato Vinaigrette. It looked good and I had the beets and couldn’t bear to wait for yellow tomato season. Let’s see, pureed tomatoes, tarragon vinegar, walnut oil vinaigrette, over sliced roasted beets and baby greens. Not the real recipe, but conceptually, it should be good.

So, how was it?

It was darned good. Just as soon as yellow tomatoes arrive at the market, I’m gonna do it right.

The Last of the Beets
Sometimes I plan for leftovers, sometimes the leftovers come to me, unannounced. We didn’t finish the beet salad and were left with two slices of each color of beet and some baby greens, undressed, and some dressing. That should make a nice lunch, but I wanted to do a little variation.

The baby greens seemed really cold and aggressive, so I put them on a plate and zapped them in the microwave for 5 seconds. Good… barely warm and a bit wilted. I arranged the beets over the bed of baby greens on the plate. I browned an Italian sausage, sliced it and finished cooking in a little olive oil, and scattered those pieces on the building salad. Then I warmed the dressing off the heat in the skillet in which I had cooked the sausage, and poured that over the composed salad.

Great lunch! And leftovers were gone. That’s the NY Times Food Book Review I’m reading during lunch. Now there are two more books that I must have.