Beetroot and vinegar

I have managed to grow some beetroot this year, not always my best crop, and last year was better. I served this with pork chops the other evening, delicious. Another Nigel Slater recipe, I am a huge fan, and you should buy all his books, the recipes are full of passion for ingredients.

INGREDIENTS:

  • Six small to medium beetroot, about the size of a lime, with the leaves on. 
  • A teaspoonful of balsamic vinegar (you could use any vinegar)
  • A tiny pinch of salt

METHOD:

  • Clean the beetroot and remove the leaves, but do not peel. 
  • Simmer in boiling water for around 20 minutes, or put into a small roasting tin in a hot oven with a little water, and cover with foil, and cook for an hour. 
  • When cooked and cool enough to handle, trim and remove the skin, which should be easy. Cut into segments, and add the vinegar and salt.
  •  Pick out the best leaves, rinse them, and roughly chop, including the stems. Treat these like chard. I cooked them in a small frying pan with butter and a little water until cooked, just a couple of minutes. 
  • Serve the beetroot on a bed of leaves. The book suggests eating with buttered bread and a hard crumbly goat’s cheese. We had them with pork chops. 

Beetroot and carrot salad

This year has been a good year for me growing beetroot and carrots, so I made this salad. I think you could also add other root vegetables, for example celeriac. I also thought about adding pumpkin seeds for a bit of crunch. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • Around 600g of root vegetables, for example carrots and beetroot
  • 1 red onion or 2 shallots
  • 2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 2 tbsp lemon juice
  • mixture of chopped herbs – parsley, mint, coriander leaves
  • 1/2 tsp salt

METHOD:

  • Peel and grate the vegetables on a coarse setting, and mix in a bowl
  • Finely chop the onion, and mix them with the grated vegetables
  • Toast the cumin seeds for about a minute and add to the vegetables
  • Chop the herbs and add them to the vegetables
  • Mix the salt, olive oil, lemon juice and pour over the vegetables. Let the mixture sit for around half an hour before serving. 

This is good with a sharp cheese. 

Beetroot, caraway and goat’s cheese soda-bread

This is a delicious Ottolenghi recipe from SIMPLE. It is so rich and full of flavour, you don’t need to add anything much. It is great sliced and spread with butter, or with a thin slice of smoked salmon. I made it as part of a mega cooking session so that I had lots of food that was good with salad, as this certainly is. I had to adapt a bit to fit with locally available ingredients. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 50g rolled oats
  • 2 tsp dried thyme leaves
  • 50g pumpkin seeds
  • 2 tsp caraway seeds
  • 2 tsp nigella seeds
  • 100g plain flour
  • 100g wholemeal flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp baking soda
  • 200g grated raw beetroot
  • 2 large eggs
  • 80ml sunflower oil
  • 80g soured cream
  • 1 tbsp honey
  • 20g grated parmesan
  • 120g goat’s cheese
  • Salt

METHOD:

  • Preheat the oven to 180C fan. Grease and line a loaf tin. 
  • Mix the oats, thyme, pumpkin, caraway, and nigella seeds in a small bowl. 
  • In a medium bowl, mix the flours and the baking powder and baking soda, along with 1/2 tsp salt. Whisk together to aerate, then add the grated beetroot and all but one tbsp of the oat mixture
  • In another bowl, lightly whisk the eggs together and beat in the oil, soured cream, honey and parmesan. 
  • Mix the egg mixture into the dry ingredients, and fold in the crumbled goat’s cheese. 
  • Pour the mixture into the tin, and add the remaining oat mixture to the top. 
  • Bake for 40 minutes, then cover with foil and bake for another 40 minutes. 
  • Remove from the oven, and set to cool for around 5 minutes before removing from the tin and cooling on a rack. It needs to be cooled for at least 20 minutes before slicing. 

 

 

Beetroot soup with cumin and mint

This is a delicious middle-eastern twist on beetroot soup, warm and filling. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 4 tbsp olive oil
  • 1/2 large onion, finely chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
  • 1 heaped teaspoonful of cumin seed
  • 750g raw beetroot, peeled and diced
  • 1 large potato, peeled and diced
  • Approx 1 litre of water
  • 3 tbsp wine vinegar
  • 1 tsp balsamic vinegar
  • a good pinch of sweet paprika
  • 1 heaped tsp dried mint
  • salt and pepper
  • Greek-style plain yoghurt to serve

METHOD:

  • Heat the oil in a large soup pan, and when it is hot, add the onion with a pinch of salt, and fry over a very low heat for around 10 minutes.
  • Add the garlic and continue to fry for another minute or so, along with the cumin and paprika
  • Add the chopped potato and chopped beetroot, and then cover with water, around 1 to 1 1/4 litre, and bring to a simmer
  • Cook for around 20 minutes, until the beetroot is nice and tender. Use a soup blender to blitz it to a smooth mixture, and add the vinegars, mint, salt and pepper to taste. It needs quite a bit of salt. 
  • Serve with a goodly dollop of yoghurt in the centre, and flat breads and chopped herbs and a drizzle of good olive oil to garnish. This is also good without all the extras. 

Beetroot dip/spread

I  made this dip from Ottolenghi’s book, Jerusalem. We had it as part of a meal that included a hot bean and leek dish, some salmon, and bread. This was the best bit. The spices I got mail order from Seasoned Pioneers

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 medium beetroot, about the size of a tennis ball
  • 2 cloves of garlic, peeled
  • 1 small hot red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
  • 250g Greek-style yoghurt
  • 1.5 tbsp date syrup 
  • 3 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 level tsp salt
  • 1 tbsp za’atar spice mix
  • 2 spring onions
  • 15g toasted hazelnuts, roughly crushed. 
  • 60g soft goat’s cheese or sheep’s cheese, crumbled. 

METHOD

  • Wash the beetroot, and cook without peeling. I boil them in water for an hour, but you can also bake them for an hour in the oven. 
  • Once they are cooked and cooled, peel them and chop them roughly. 
  • Put the garlic, beetroot, chilli and yoghurt in a blender, and puree. I used a soup wand to do this. 
  • Mix in the date syrup, salt, olive oil and Za’atar. 
  • Transfer the mixture to a serving dish, and garnish with chopped spring onions, goats cheese and toasted hazelnuts. A drizzle of olive oil is good as well. 

This is best served at room temperature, with bread. 

Red Soup

Red lentils, beetroot and tomato puree. This is a great soup. 

INGREDIENTS:

  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 1 beetroot, a bit bigger than a tennis ball
  • 1 tbsp tomato puree
  • 3 sticks of celery, thinly sliced
  • 2 tbsp olive oil or other vegetable oil
  • 120g red lentils
  • 1 litre of vegetable stock
  • Juice of half a lemon
  • salt and pepper

METHOD:

  • Boil the beetroot for an hour, then cool, peel and chop. 
  • Gently fry the chopped onion and celery in the olive oil for five minutes or so, add the chopped beetroot and stir. 
  • Add the stock, tomato puree and lentils, and bring to a simmer. Keep simmering for 30 minutes. 
  • Puree the soup with a soup wand, and then add lemon juice, salt and pepper to taste. 

Serve with brown bread. Lovely, tasty, filling, red. 

Spiced beetroot and tomato soup

I had two more large beetroot left, so I made this soup, adapted slightly from Madhur Jaffrey’s Eastern Vegetarian Cooking, which I bought in 1983s. The link is to a subsequent edition.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 2 large beetroot, peeled and diced
  • 500ml water
  • butter
  • 1/2 tsp cumin seeds
  • 4 whole cloves
  • 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, or a 2cm stick of cinnamon
  • 1 tin of chopped tomatoes
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1 level tsp ground black pepper
  • Sour cream or double cream

METHOD:

  • Cook the chopped beetroot in the water. Simmer for about an hour, to make sure the beetroot is really soft.
  • Drain the beetroot, and make the liquid up to 450ml if necessary.
  • Add the beetroot back to the liquor, along with the tin of chopped tomatoes and use the soup wand to liquidise
  • In a saucepan, fry the spices in butter, and then add the beetroot and tomatoes, and bring to a simmer.
  • Add salt and pepper to taste.
  • Strain the soup through a coarse sieve to remove the whole spices, and then add the cream, and reheat.

Beetroot gratin

We had this last night and tonight, totally delicious. The beetroot were about the size of tennis balls, fresh from a friend’s garden.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 50g butter
  • 50g mature cheddar, grated
  • 50g parmesan, grated
  • 6 beetroot, boiled and skinned, cut into 1cm cubes
  • salt and pepper
  • 6 anchovies, or some worcestershire sauce
  • 250ml to 300ml double cream
  • breadcrumbs

METHOD:

  • Butter a gratin dish, and spread 1/3 of the cheese across the bottom.
  • Add a layer of half the beetroot, and then add the anchovies, or a good sprinkling of worcestershire sauce.
  • Next layer, another 1/3 of the cheese.
  • Next layer, the rest of the beetroot.
  • Last layer, add the rest of the cheese, and press the ingredients into the dish. Season with a little salt and pepper.
  • Pour the cream over the beetroot, and then add a sprinkling of breadcrumbs on top.
  • Bake in a hot oven 200C for 15 minutes or more, until bubbling and golden on the top.

I served this with bread as a light supper one evening, and then as a side-dish the next night.

Baked beetroot

There are some great fresh beetroot in the shops at the moment, UK-grown. I’ve been trying out a few recipes, and found this one in ‘Full Throttle’ by the two Fat Ladies.

INGREDIENTS:

  • Raw beetroot
  • Olive oil
  • Salt and pepper
  • Fresh mint
  • Sour cream

METHOD:

  • Put the beetroot into a roasting tin, coat with olive oil and season with salt and pepper, much as you would do for baked potatoes.
  • Bake in a hot oven 200C for at least one hour, until they are tender when pierced with a knife.
  • Split open and serve with sour cream and chopped mint.

Beetroot and Coconut Curry

 

Malcolm got this recipe from somewhere, no idea where. We had it tonight, cooked with beetroot from Maria’s vegetable box scheme.

INGREDIENTS:

  • 400g raw beetroot
  • 2 tbsp organic sunflower oil
  • 1/4 tsp black mustard seeds
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 2 hot green chillies
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • 1/2 can organic chopped tomatoes
  • A pinch of salt
  • 100ml coconut milk
  • juice of 1 lime

METHOD:

  • Peel the beetroot, and cut into matchsticks (a mandolin is useful for this. Or just cut it up as small as you can)
  • Heat the oil in a large saucepan, and add the mustard seeds. As soon as they start jumping, add the onion, garlic and chillies. Fry on medium heat until the onion is tender.
  • Add the spices and the beetroot, fry for a further two minutes and then add the tomatoes, 250ml water and a pinch of salt.
  • Simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the beetroot is tender.
  • Add the coconut milk and let it simmer for another couple of minutes, until the sauce has thickened.
  • Stir in the lime juice, adjust the seasoning, and serve with rice.