Can’t Beet This

The day I took off and made the flatbread, that wasn’t all I made.  I also decided to chip away at the beet problem we have in the fridge.  

I quite like beets but we have had an awful lot of them, and there are only so many ways to make them. Soup is out – we have a metric ton of borscht in the freezer still.  This time I decided to do a quasi-salad with roasted beets.

Wrapping things in tin foil makes them roast better.  This is a thing I have known is true for potatos since forever.  Internet research suggests it is also true for beets, and my practical experience developed over the last several months supports this.

Beets take a really long time to roast, but that’s okay because they’re really good when they’re done and it’s not like you have to do anything to them while they’re roasting.  I did a lot fo futzing with failing flatbread.  One of the great things about beets is that you can eat them raw, so if you don’t get them roasted all the way, nobody dies.  That said, they are better properly cooked.

A broad swath of recipes all agree that you should roast the beets, then take off the skin.  Some suggest that this is because the skin comes off more easily post-roasting.  This has not been my experience.  I may try peeling them before wrapping them in the foil and see if that changes the result.

Foy, for those of you not following my random squeeing on google+ and twitter, has gotten quite productive.  The fennel, in particular, is being aggressive about growing all the time.  So I had a lot of fennel on hand, and threw that into a vinagarete that involved other tasty things like shallots, lemon juice, and red wine vinegar.  Then I threw it all together in a bowl with some chopped pecans.  It madea  really nice side dish which I picked at for a few days at lunch, too.

I finally finished it all off yesterday when I needed a lunch I could pack for the road which wouldn’t need to be heated.  For that I added some blue cheese, just to get the fat and protein ratios up.  That was a really good idea.

The whole time I’ve been eating this dish I’ve wished I had arugula on hand, because mixing it with some hearty greens would have been phenomenally nice, but it was a pretty nice dish on its own, too.  If we’re still eating these beets when arugula season comes back, though, watch out!