Beets - A Loved Root Vegetable

Of all the root vegetables, my favorite for most of my life has been beets. From the piquant pickled beets of my childhood, to the robust sauteed beet greens and the delicate sweetness of lightly cooked baby beets of my adulthood, beets have held me in their thrall. It doesn't matter if they are the dark ruby ones or chiogga or golden beets. Each is tasty and each is carefully kept long after the season is over to be put into our meals for many winter days.

A favorite way to make beets is to turn them into bright little chips with any supper. Crank up the oven to 400F; cut the beets in 1/4" slices and spread them in a pan on parchment paper. Lightly oil and salt and pepper them. Bake for 10 minutes;  flip them and bake another 10 minutes. Slightly crisp, a little smoky and deeply sweet and roasted, they are finger-licking good.

Another favorite way to cook them is from an old recipe (so old I've lost the origin), Roasted Beets and French Lentil Salad.  Our friend Francoise (an amazing cook) would make the most astounding lentils with the simplest ingredients on New Year's Day. I think of her when I make this recipe because the tastiness of the lentils echoes hers in some small way. It always calls to me at the turn of each new year as well.

Beets finished roasting

• 3 medium beets, oiled, wrapped tightly in aluminum foil and roasted in a 400F oven for one hour; then peeled and diced
• 1/4 c. minced flat leaf parsley
• mixed baby salad greens
• 3 oz of goat cheese

Combine in a saucepan & cover by 2" with cold water:

• 1 cup French or green lentils
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 large cloves of garlic peeled and smashed
• 1/2 onion studded with whole clove
• 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt

Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered until lentils are tender (about 25 minutes). Strain lentils and discard herbs, garlic and onions.Put lentils in a large bowl.

For dressing:

• 1 1/2 T sherry wine or balsamic vinegar
• 1 T. whole grain mustard
• 1/2 t. salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 3/4 T olive oil
• 1 shallot minced

Mix a little more than half the dressing into the lentils, add the diced beets and parsley and mix.  Use the rest of the dressing on baby salad greens. Top the greens with the lentil mixture and add dots of goat cheese on top.

This makes enough for 4 main dish salads. Um, I'd show you a picture of the finished salad...but we ate it too quickly! Num!

Getting Fresh - Winter Salads

Pomegranates & shaved radishes

We love fresh greens in the dark days of winter. Although we enjoy eating local and seasonal, this is the hardest to achieve with salad greens during January and February. Most farms, even ones with greenhouses, can barely afford the fuel for heat and grow lights in this darkest of seasons to grow the delicate beauties. Few achieve it near us.  But we crave a fresh bite, so off to the co-op we go.

For some odd reason, we get more crazy inventive with our salads than we do in spring and early summer with abundant salad greens at our fingertips.  We top our winter salad greens with pomegranates and oranges; pears and citrus; avocados and nuts; shaved radishes and cabbage . We play with vinegars as we make our dressings and noodle around with bits of this and that for more crunch. Cheeses in little dollops for the soft ones and thin shaved pieces for the hard ones lend an interesting depth to the proceedings.

It's like a little party everyday. We're not sure what'll appear in our salads but that makes it all the more fun!

Getting Some Morroccan Roots On

One of the fun parts of any CSA share (community supported agriculture) is the surprise of just which veggies and fruits are found in the box each week. We have tried all kinds of new tastes and found real excitement in exploring recipes to enjoy them. We received shares in both November and December from Ridgeland Harvest, our CSA, that were full of great root vegetables - turnips, rutabagas, beets, potatoes, carrots.

We don't often eat rutabagas and turnips so we wanted something tasty that could be a "keeper" recipe to return to annually when the bounty of root vegetables comes. We found a winter-satisfying recipe that really elevated them into something scrumptious - I know, I know, for some people root veggies are never described that way -
Morroccan Style Chicken with Root Vegetables from Epicurious.

Although it broke my 10-ingredient rule, we had everything the recipe called for on hand or a close substitute to keep it rocking. The roots used were rutabaga, turnips, carrots and sweet potatoes.We had home canned tomatoes; chicken stock; currants and even cilantro hanging around. Biggest prep time was just peeling & cutting up the veggies - about 7 cups worth. That took as long as the quick cooking of the stew.  But with curry, cumin and cinnamon perfuming the root vegetables, it was worth every chop. This is indeed a root-recipe keeper!

Winter Farmer's Market

It's been over six weeks since our last winter delivery from Ridgeland Harvest, our CSA. We have a some carrots, beets and turnips left; a smattering of onions, one last bag of potatoes and beautiful garlic. The radishes and squash are long since eaten.  But more winter vegetables are still plentiful for us because of winter farmer's markets that linger into February.

What kind of food can you possibly find in the dark, cold days of mid-winter? Cabbage and onions, meats and eggs, root vegetables - and best of all - greens are still coming our way. We went down to Madison's market on Saturday and found sweet microgreens and frost-touched spinach, more squash and onions, a great cabbage and more of our new addiction - beauty heart radishes.

There were also potatoes, onions, garlic, mushrooms, beets, rutabagas, delicate lettuce, sunflower oil and all the wonderful winter-keeping root vegetables that can sustain you and are marvelous in soups and stews.

Root vegetables like turnips and rutabagas have been a revelation to us over the last few years. The waxed roots at the stores were always a little disgusting. So never purchased, never eaten.  Now that we have access to these roots through our CSA and winter markets, we've embraced them and found their rich flavor and high vitamin content a welcome addition to our winter eating. I'll share a recipe or two over the coming weeks to motivate you - and hope you share your favorites with me!

Winter Cooking Wonder

Mississippi River slough on Goose Island, La Crosse WI

As the snow falls and the temperature plummets, we both find great comfort in the foods we cook in winter.  Stews and soups, an occasional bold run out to the grill (a Big Green Egg - a gift from my brother and mother); citrus and salad greens as we can. We have a fridge and pantry full of root vegetables - beets, rutabagas, carrots, turnips, potatoes and some lovely fresh Beauty Heart and Black Spanish radishes that make our salads sing.

Our minds turn to meat quite often now - the lamb from our farmer Carol in Amherst; the pork roasts and tenderloins from an Argyle  farm family; tiny, tasty tenderloins from our farming friends in Ettrick and rural Clintonville; chickens from our CSA farm near Viroqua; the Mississippi flathead catfish from a local fishmonger - perhaps because the deep cold calls us to eat more protein to keep warm. It's all packed away in the freezer for us to make our way through during the long cold days.

There are long rituals of making these meals in the cold weather - not the fast stir fry or quick toss of vegetables of the spring and summer. This is the long simmering; the slow braising; the baking and the stewing to develop the deep complex flavors that pique our interest and palettes. We come back from a ski or a snowshoe or a shovel or a bracing, skating hike on the sidewalks and find the warmth of these slow meals cooked in the winter dark to be a wonder in themselves.