Cabbage and Beet Borscht

I know I've posted before about how I don't like cucumbers, and now I have to rag on another vegetable:  beets.  They taste like dirt.  There, I said it.  Their sweetness just makes the dirt-flavor more pronounced.  They're what I imagine a mud pie would taste like.  Yuck.

But, a lot of people like beets.  They're beautiful.  We get them quite frequently in our CSA share.  And I'm not one to give up--there has to be a way to prepare these that will be better than palatable.  Something I'll think is good.

And I may have found that recipe.  Cabbage and beet borscht.  My mother-in-law likes borscht, and she was coming over for dinner so I figured I'd use up my dreaded beets on a meal I knew at least one person would enjoy.  I scanned around the internet looking for a recipe, and ultimately settled on this one since I also had a head of red cabbage sitting in the fridge from the CSA.

I followed the linked recipe from Allrecipes pretty closely (except I omitted the optional caraway seeds, and vegetable quantities were approximate based on how much I had on hand).  It appears to be a near-clone of the Borscht recipe from The Moosewood Cookbook, a cookbook that is sadly lacking from my bookshelf.  Perhaps this will be the impetus I need to finally add The Moosewood Cookbook to my collection!

End result was a soup where the beet flavor was tamed from "dirty" to "earthy".  I can live with earthy.  I mean, I wouldn't want to eat this borscht every day, but for the times when we get beets in our CSA share, well, this isn't such a bad way to use them up!

Sage-Roasted Fall Vegetable Salad

This past Saturday was our last CSA vegetable pick-up of the season. Breaking up's been hard to do (and I'm still not over it). I've loved every minute of our relationship with Holiday Brook Farm. Our family was blessed with many of our seasonal favorites and I've tried things I haven't had since my mother MADE me eat them as a child and have been pleasantly surprised to find I like them, I really like them! Many of the root vegetables in the recipe I'm about to share fall into the latter category.

This recipe, adapted from Serving up the Harvest, was included in our CSA newsletter this week and since we received turnips, rutabagas, onions and celeriac in our pick-up this week and I had some local butternut squash posing as a centerpiece on our table, some beets from the farm in the crisper and some sage hanging in there in our herb garden, I immediately began dicing.

Ingredients:

1 cup wild rice, cooked according to directions (I used chicken bouillon instead of water)

12 cups of peeled (optional) and diced fall veggies such as winter squash, carrots, beets, rutabagas, turnips, parsnips and/or celeriac
1 onion, diced
1 Tab fresh sage, chopped
3 Tab EVOO
Fresh ground pepper

Cranberry Vinaigrette
2 shallots, chopped
1 cup cranberry sauce/jam
2 Tab fruited vinegar or red wine vinegar
2 Tab fresh orange juice
3/4 cup walnut or olive oil
Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.

Directions:
Cook wild rice according to instructions. Let cool.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450. Lightly grease a shallow roasting pan with oil (I just tossed the veggies in it and called it a day). Combine the diced fall veggies, onion and sage in a large bowl. Add the oil and toss gently to coat. Transfer to the roasting pan and arrange in a single layer.

Roast for 30-40 minutes stirring occasionally, until the veggies are tender and lightly browned.

To make the vinaigrette, finely chop the shallots in a blender. Add the cranberry sauce, vinegar, orange juice and oil and process until smooth. Season with salt and pepper.

Combine the roasted veggies and vinaigrette in a large bowl. Add rice and toss gently to mix. Taste and add salt and pepper if desired. Serve warm or at room temperature.

This dish was really out of this world - from the sweet roasted vegetables to the savory rice perfectly married with just a touch of fruity goodness. This one's a keeper and I'll definitely be adding this vinaigrette to some baby spinach with toasted walnuts and dried cranberries to make a scrumptious salad this holiday season!
As you can see, I served it alongside our roasted free range chicken from EarthFire Farm.
Bon Appetit!

Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese

I must admit that beets aren't my favorite, and I'm trying not to let my kids catch on. I mean, they're sweet. They're such a bold, pretty color. Shouldn't kids be attracted to beets? Shouldn't I? But I keep persisting, thanks to our CSA, in trying to make delicious beet recipes. I doubt I'd go out and buy beets, but when they show up in our share, I figure I'm obliged to try to enjoy them.

This time I decided on Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese, borrowing quite heavily from this recipe. Not my favorite food picture ever, but my kids were pretty amused that I'd used the flowered dessert plates to make the beets look like a flower.


Here is the recipe with my changes:

Ingredients:

2 bunches of small-ish beets (about 8-10 beets)
4 small eating onions from the CSA (about 1/3 cup minced) (you could substitute regular onion or shallots)
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
plenty of crumbled goat cheese (for those eating local in MA, I'm in love with Capri goat cheese from Westfield Farm)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove any beet greens, leaving a small amount of stem. Wash the beets and place in a baking dish. Toss with some olive oil until lightly coated. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil (or a lid) and bake about 45 minutes to an hour, until beets are easily pierced by a fork.

While the beets are roasting, mix together all the other ingredients besides the goat cheese. Set aside.

After beets have cooled slightly, cut off the top and bottom and use your fingers to remove the skin. Slice thinly into rounds.

Place the beets onto a serving dish and top with the vinaigrette and crumbled goat cheese.

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These were the most delicious beets I've ever eaten. They got rave reviews from everyone who tried them, which unfortunately did not include our children, who are persisting in their vegetable ban.

A whole bunch of recipes!

I love vegetables, but I've found that I'm pretty tame in what I buy: if I'm at the store, I get what I know. Zucchini, green beans, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions. I love that the CSA is forcing me to branch out a bit. One of the vegetables we got that I had no idea how to prepare was kohlrabi. Honestly, I don't think I've ever even SEEN kohlrabi in the grocery store. I searched around online and found a recipe that appealed to me: kohlrabi and carrots in honey butter sauce. I figured, carrots: good. Honey: good. Butter: good.



The recipe was simple and I followed it pretty closely (although for some unknown reason, I halved the kohlrabi and carrots amounts but forgot to half everything else so it ended up a bit soupy. Operator error on that one but easily corrected as I just used a slotted spoon to remove the carrots and kohlrabi).

It was tasty, but somehow wasn't quite outstanding. The carrots were better than the kohlrabi. I'm not sure if I don't love kohlrabi, or if this just wasn't the best dish to showcase it, but I'd probably try a different recipe if we get kohlrabi again.

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Next it was time for the beets. I must admit, I'm not a beet fan. I've mainly had them at salad bars and have come to conclude they're just there to fill out the salad bar without the restaurant having to worry that anyone would actually want to eat them. But, as always, I'm game to give something a try.

I got my inspiration from this recipe to match roasted beets with goat cheese. However, I thought this was a bit fussy with cutting everything into perfect rounds and having different oils and vinaigrettes and glazes. And I didn't have two different kinds of beets...just the golden ones. And I'm probably admitting to my pedestrian tastes, but I'm just not a big fan of towers of food. That's just weird in my admittedly non-gourmet opinion to have stacked food, unless it's a club sandwich.

So I just tossed the beets in a few tablespoons of olive oil, put them in a baking dish covered with aluminum foil, and baked them at 350 degrees for about an hour (for my small beets) until a toothpick easily pierced the center. You can peel them after they've been roasted (and cooled a bit). The skin just peels off with your fingers.

I sliced the beets thinly and alternated them with slices of herb and garlic goat cheese. (As an aside, the goat cheese was local as well, from Westfield Farm. It was outstanding cheese!)


My final vote: it was pretty good. I'm not a huge beet fan, but the goat cheese/beet combination was perfect. TK thought this was incredible, but he likes beets far more than I do. Three year old twins: liked the goat cheese, wouldn't try the beets.

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As we were picking up the beets, the guy working the distribution mentioned that beet greens were delicious. Darn it, now I have no excuse for not cooking them!

I found a recipe for preparing beet greens (or kale, or collard greens) that used vinegar and bacon. Hey, that sounds good to me! As an aside, have I mentioned my theory of preparing these odd, new (to me) vegetables, or vegetables I haven't liked in the past? I try to pick a recipe that includes an ingredient I like. Goat cheese, bacon, honey...something familiar that I know I'll like.

Here's a link to the recipe I used. I made some changes, though, fairly significantly altering quantities:

Ingredients:

Green from 5 beets
1/2 large onion, finely diced
2 strips of bacon
1 garlic clove, minced
1/2 cup water
1 teaspoon sugar
Sprinkle red pepper flakes
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar

Directions:

Wash beet greens, remove thick stems, and tear leaves into bite sized pieces. Set aside.

Fry bacon until crispy and set aside on paper towels to drain.

Add onions to the bacon grease and cook over medium heat until slightly translucent. Add the garlic, stir, then add the water, sugar, and red pepper flakes. Bring to a boil. Stir in the greens and reduce the heat to low. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes (the original recipe calls for 30 minutes if you're using kale or collard greens). Add the vinegar, cook for about 1 minute, then you're done! (The original recipe is a little unclear; if you're using kale or collard greens you may have to cook for an additional 20 or so minutes....basically, if you're using kale or collard greens, you should probably just head on over to the original recipe linked above).

Place the greens on a plate and garnish with crumbled bacon.


These were interesting. It was definitely my first time eating beet greens. They were sweet and sour; a touch spicy and a hint salty. That sounds like a lot of competing flavors, and it kind of was. But somehow it worked. TK and I cleaned this up...there wasn't a bite left. At the end of dinner, we even ate the little bits we'd put on the boys plates that they had totally ignored. Well, except for picking the bacon off to eat.

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If you look closely at the picture of the beet greens, you can see in the background that we had quinoa with it. In the last 3 minutes of cooking the quinoa, I tossed in some spinach. It was a great addition and a good way to use up some of that spinach. I'm not even going to include a recipe...just cook the quinoa however you normally do (or follow the directions on the bag/box if you don't normally prepare quinoa), then toss in some chopped spinach. Yum!