Beaten by Beets **RECIPE ALERT**

I'm a week or so behind on sharing my CSA with you:

Red pepper; cucumber; beets; carrots; Sungold tomatoes; blueberries

As you can see, this week's box was a little thin. No worries: the risk of joining a CSA is that there may be weeks where you don't get loaded up with the goods, and apparently week 4 was one of those. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to find that my brother & sis 'n law weren't going to be the only ones to enjoy blueberries, as well as intrigued by all the possibilities the Sungold tomatoes could yield in terms of recipes. In the end, they were so sweet and juicy I ended up just eating them as my afternoon snacks at work. I've never eaten tomatoes as a snack before, so you can imagine how amazing they were.

One item I was a little wary of seeing yet again were the beets. For those of you keeping score, I had also received beets in the last box so now I was two bunches in. I am generally not a fan of beets except for an amazing beet dish I had at Taxim, a restaurant I visited in an earlier post. Either Taxim's chef did something really well or my taste buds were changing.  In any case, the beets from my CSA were waiting patiently for me to use them and the first bunch was getting a little old. Without the Taxim recipe available to me, I needed to be creative.

I searched online and found a recipe for Roasted Beets with Oranges that incorporated mostly ingredients I already had in-house, such as my lovely homemade red wine vinegar, and logged glowing reviews that included multiple variations on "I hate beets but I loved this recipe!" I took that to be a good sign. I promptly invited my boyfriend over, ran to the store to grab the appropriate missing items, and got ready for a culinary adventure.

That is, however, until I read the recipe more carefully. To be clear, I generally peruse recipes thoroughly before committing to them, but for some reason in this case I managed to skip over the section that said I needed to roast the beets for an hour and a half first, and then after assembling the final dish I had to let it marinate for another hour. The two of us are absolute pros at eating dinner at ridiculously late hours-- sometimes it's almost breakfast, it seems-- so suddenly this dish seemed an impossible task.

What to do? It was after 7pm, I hadn't started to cook yet, and the options were looking bleak. I just didn't have a go-to recipe in my repertoire like I do for the vegetables I actually enjoy on a regular basis. At that moment, my eyes wandered to my cookbook shelf and I slapped my forehead.

Towards the beginning of the Au Naturale journey, but before the winter frost had begun to thaw, I swung by a shuttering Borders bookstore and ravaged what was left of the cookbook section. One of the two books I treated myself to was in anticipation of signing up for my first CSA: it's called Eating Local, published by Sur la Table. It's designed for the farm box subscriber in mind, and instead of being organized by dish or meal it's organized by main ingredient. So when you get a mess of, oh, say, beets, and need to know 4 different ways to use them up, you can just turn to the beet section. Even more fun, it features profiles of small, independent farms from all over the country, the kind of farms I choose to support and encourage all of you to support, too.  After buying that book I spent many a lazy night curled up on the couch, eagerly reading it from start to finish.

I grabbed the book off the shelf and to the beet section I went! While looking for a recipe that did not necessitate another run to the store, I found a recipe for Golden Beet and Buttermilk Soup, which was surely a sign: what an excellent way to use up the rest of the buttermilk leftover from the strawberry basil muffins! The only other changes were substituting green onion for chives (as I didn't have any); adding an extra clove of garlic (because we love garlic); and our beets were red instead of golden. If you happen to have the option of using golden beets I strongly recommend it. Using the red, the resulting dish was not physically unlike the bright pink of borscht:

Reactions-- and how I used the remaining beets-- after the recipe. Yep, I'm going to make you work for it:

Beet and Buttermilk Soup:

Ingredients:
1 pound beets, golden or red (weight without greens, about 3 medium beets)
1 large clove garlic, sliced
3 cups buttermilk (I used low-fat)
1/4 cup chopped fresh chives, or 2 tbs chopped fresh dill, plus more finely chopped for garnish
1 TBS sherry vinegar or white wine vinegar, or more to taste
kosher or sea salt


Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 375. If the beet greens are attached, remove all but 1/2 inch of the stem. Reserve the greens and stems for another use. Put the beets in a baking dish, and add water to a depth of 1/4 inch. Cover tightly with a lid or foil and bake until a knife pierces them easily, 45 to 55 minutes. When cool enough to handle, peel the beets.


2) Cut the beets into quarters. Put the beets, garlic, and 1 1/2 cups of the buttermilk in a blender and puree until smooth. (You can use a food processor but the results will not be as smooth.) Add the remaining 1 1/2 cups buttermilk, the dill, and the vinegar and puree again. Season to taste with salt. Transfer to a covered container and chill well.


3) Taste before serving and adjust the seasoning. Serve in cups or bowls, garnishing each portion with a sprinkle of the chives.


So-- my thoughts?  Meh. Although I do appreciate that beets are quite easy to peel. I was expecting to wrestle with them like one often wrestles with peeling inconveniently shaped foods. I know what you're thinking now: "Really?? 'Meh?' Then why did you even bother to post the recipe?" Right?  I decided to post because my fantastic and honest boyfriend, who is ambivalent about beets and generally dislikes cold soups (there goes my gazpacho plans), thought this was really quite tasty. So for all you beet lovers out there, this soup is probably right up your alley.

Alas, though, yesterday I found myself in a quandary with the remaining beets that were beginning to get a bit long in the tooth. I decided to go for the original beet and orange salad- I had the ingredients, I needed to redeem myself from the chocolate cupcake I snagged off the Evil Bar of Doom, and I kind of didn't care that I might not eat dinner until 10pm... which ended up being the case. In addition to the fact that I am a slow cook-- so when a recipe says it will only take a half hour, I know that I'm in for a full hour-- I hadn't had a night home all week and the long time in between steps allowed me to get some things done, such as finally unpack from last weekend's trip (more on that in the next posts).

I would rate this one as refreshing and summery, and not too bad. And it's very colorful. I liked it better than the soup.  But still kind of a "meh".  I otherwise wouldn't post this recipe with a "meh" rating, but hey, this is going to be my first and last post dedicated to beets. After just two beet-centric cooking adventures, I'm pretty sure I'm done with them for good.

Roasted Beet Salad with Oranges and Beet Greens
(thanks to Epicurious for this one)

• Ingredients:
• 6 medium beets with beet greens attached

• 2 large oranges
• 1 small sweet onion, cut through root end into thin wedges
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon grated orange peel

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F. Trim greens from beets. Cut off and discard stems. Coarsely chop leaves and reserve. Wrap each beet in foil. Place beets directly on oven rack and roast until tender when pierced with fork, about 1 hour 30 minutes. Cool. Peel beets, then cut each into 8 wedges. Place beets in medium bowl.

Cook beet greens in large saucepan of salted boiling water just until tender, about 2 minutes. Drain. Cool. Squeeze greens to remove excess moisture. Add greens to bowl with beets. Cut peel and white pith from oranges. Working over another bowl and using small sharp knife, cut between membranes to release segments (or just carefully pull them apart with your fingers. Add orange segments and onion to bowl with beet mixture. Whisk vinegar, oil, garlic, and orange peel in small bowl to blend; add to beet mixture and toss to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Serve.