Here comes another side dish which never fails to impress. I promise you that your guests will be more interested in the beetroot than in any kind of meat. AND almost nothing to do, just peeling the beetroots. The rest makes the oven.
Ingredients
1kg beetroot
200g fresh goat cheese
2-3 clove garlic with skin
2 fresh bay leaves
3-5 sprigs thyme
heavy dash aceto balsamico
olive oil
Preparation
Wash and peel the beetroots
Quarter the beetroots
Put the quarters to an oven-proven form
Add olive oil, garlic with skin, bay leaves
Finally add thyme and then for 1h and 200C/400F in the oven
Mix 2-3 times during roasting process and add aceto balsamico after 30-45min.
This also makes a great salad or appetizer. And if you really want to go nuts, fry the goat cheese in tempura. Chill the goat cheese in the freezer (easier to cut), and then cut into pucks. Put pucks back into freezer. Heat oil, make tempura batter. Remove goat cheese from freezer, dredge in flour then tempura batter. Deep fry until somewhere just between golden and golden brown. Serve atop the beet salad. Be ready for the foodgasm.
Martinās recipe is excellent. Iāll suggest as well that beets are a great candidate for sous vide. Roughly the same ingredients, ~185f, 1hr to a couple hours depending on the texture you prefer.
The flavor profile is a bit different - somewhat fresher, no āroastedā flavor. One nice side-benefit to sous vide is that the liquid that the beets give off stays in the bag and gets flavored by all the wonderful aromatics. Very intense beet-y flavor, which can either be used with the beets or reserved for a separate use!
If they are the sweet white Japanese turnips like Hakurai or similar variety, Iāll eat them raw (in salads, or sliced up with a dip), or mashed (I like a mix of turnips and a potato like Yukon Gold, cooked and mashed, and mixed with the turnip greens that have been sauteed separately). And roasting is probably my favourite way to prepare them.
Other turnips that are less sweet and/or maybe have a less fine texture also do well roasted or mashed, but are sometimes not very nice raw.
My CSA share this week will be delivered tomorrow and I know Iām getting these sweet Japanese turnipsāa double treat as the greens are also delicious. My CSA farmer grows such gorgeous turnips that I no longer even try growing them at home.
If you are lucky enough to have good quality greens on the turnips, they are delicious sauteed with garlic and olive oil, and tossed with pasta. They are in fact very closely related to ābroccoli raabā or rapini or ācima di rapaā (which means turnip tops). Iām always surprised that so many people throw away edible leafy tops (turnips, kohlrabi, radishes, carrots). Apart from wasting food (which I hate to see), theyāre missing out on a tasty dish.
I already know that tomorrowās dinner is going to include sauteed turnip greens and probably any mixed salad greens that I get. I donāt find lettuce-based salads interesting (I like arugula and other more strongly flavoured greens) so lettuce mixes usually get cooked.
My CSA farmer grows such gorgeous turnips that I no longer even try growing them at home.