Beets and greens

I'm trying to be creative in my use of the various share items so today I did a take off on this recipe at Epicurious.


What did I change? Several things. First, rather than rice I used the seven grain mix from the share. I added a couple of cloves of garlic and I used Parmesan cheese rather than goat cheese. Then I sprinkled the final dish with fresh basil. And I liked it a lot, in fact, I liked it a lot better than the squash risotto I made awhile back. The problem with beets is that everything cooked with beets ends up looking like beets. Here is what it looked like right after I added the beets:

At the end, it was quite a lot more dramatic:



I also made a puree of the the rutabagas from the share. I boiled them with the remaining two parsnips, two accidental turnips (I couldn't tell they were turnips until after I peeled them) and three peeled and cored apples.

I mashed them with my new and wonderful toy, the immersion blender. Oh how I love using that thing for smoothies in the morning.

I mixed them until they looked like this:
Then added some butter, salt, and maple syrup.


Now, that was a decent side but it wasn't as good as the beet pilaf. The funny thing though? My favorite part of the meal was the salad I made with the lettuce from the share, some of the topping from the Judyboo's Bok Choy salad recipe, a generous handful of dried cranberries and a simple dressing of vinegar, sunflower oil, hot sauce, sugar, and salt.


I served everything above with a roast whole chicken but who wants a picture of a chicken? And why were there pictures today anyway? Ben broke my cheapie tripod so he bought a new one on eBay and it's an amazingly complicated professional tripod. I'm still trying to figure out which controls move the camera and tripod in which direction however, I make no promises to take more pictures as I'm cooking. But I might.

Miso Roasted Root Vegetables

This recipe was in the share newsletter a couple of weeks ago and since I'm swimming in beets at the moment I thought I'd give it a try. I did NOT regret it one bit.


Miso Roasted Root Vegetables

Mark Bittman's book, How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, has a lot of good information about miso, as well as suggested recipes. Although he extols the health benefits of uncooked miso, his book also includes a few recipes where the miso gets some heat. The recipe for the Miso glaze below is adapted from one of them. You can also use the glaze when grilling vegetables or tofu. The roasted vegetables would make a great side dish for the tofu recipe below. Leftovers can be brought to room temperature and tossed with mesclun and Asian dressing and garnished with chopped dulse for a light salad supper.


1/2 cup miso
1/4 cup honey
1 clove minced garlic
1 hot pepper minced, or 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
2 TB sunflower oil

4 lbs mixed root vegetables, such as turnips, rutabagas and beets
salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375F. Whisk together glaze ingredients, miso through sunflower oil. Heat slightly if your honey has crystallized and the mixture is too thick. Peel, slice and chop vegetables into 1/2" pieces. Toss veggies with glaze on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with salt. Roast in the oven for 45 to 60 minutes, tossing every 15 minutes, until vegetables are caramelized on the outside and soft on the inside. Serve hot or at room temperature.

I used a mix of beets, rutabagas, and parsnips and followed the recipe as written. I used a jalapeno pepper and it really didn't add any significant heat so feel free to add a couple of them.

Ben and I loved this recipe as did our neighbor who was here as I pulled it out of the oven. Sam? Not so much.

Chocolate Beet Muffins

Yes, you read that correctly! I really try to use most of the things we get in the share prior to receiving the next share. Last night Ben broiled some pork chops and made a maple syrup reduction to put over them...excellent! While he was messing with that I made a turnip slaw subbing turnips for beets in this recipe. But I still had some beets left so I cooked those up and pureed them.

I thought I could make a beet muffin of some sort, something nice and red but when I started digging around the internet I didn't find any recipes for beet bread or beet muffins except for a recipe for Double Chocolate Beet Muffins.

Of course I didn't follow the recipe completely for several reasons. One reason for that is because it sounded a tad fussy for a muffin, then of course I didn't have all the ingredients, and lastly, I had more beets than I needed so I did my usual modifications. The recipe below shows what I actually used.

While they were baking a very unappetizing odor was coming from the oven but apparently it wasn't from the muffins. Ben later told me "Oh, that was the potato I dropped in the oven yesterday." I looked in the oven before I started and didn't see the potato but the ones we ate last night were tiny.


Chocolate Beet Muffins
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Makes 18 medium muffins and an addition 24 baby sized muffins but I don't like them overfilled because I put them in Sam's lunch so these are smallish muffins. Make them larger if you wish.

1 1/2 C. whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 C. all-purpose flour
1 T baking powder
1 1/2 t. baking soda
3/4 t. salt
6 T cocoa
1/2 C butter
1 c chocolate chips
1 1/4 c packed brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 c beet puree
1 c yogurt
1 1/2 t. vanilla extract

Grease muffin tins or line with paper cups
Melt the butter with the cocoa. Add to mixing bowl. Add beet puree, eggs, yogurt, brown sugar, and vanilla. Mix in the salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Fold in the remaining ingredients.

Place muffin pan in a preheated 375 oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. Muffins are done when they spring back when touched lightly in the center. Don’t overbake!

Verdict: Excellent! All the way around. Three thumbs up (or six if we each do two)

Beet and carrot slaw

This one came from our farm share newsletter. They've often got some good ideas for using lots of local ingredients.

Beet Carrot Slaw
4 servings

2 Beets, peeled
3 Carrots, peeled
1 c sprouts
1/4 c oil
1/4 c cider vinegar
2 tbsp maple syrup or sugar
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste
Blue Ledge Chevre

Whisk together oil, vinegar, maple, garlic, salt and pepper to make a dressing. Grate beets into a small bowl. Grate carrots into another bowl, mix in sprouts. (Keeping them separate for now will preserve their colors.) Toss 1/2 the dressing with the beets, 1/2 with the carrot & sprouts. Set aside to marinate for a bit. Combine just before serving, with some of the goat cheese crumbled over the top.

I actually followed the recipe pretty much as it's listed above (unusual for me) although I served it over some regular salad greens just to increase the green factor.

Verdict: I liked it, I liked it a lot. I served it with the butternut risotta that was pretty mediocre so at least something I made was good...