Surprise! I Love Beets!

This week in my organic produce share were some gorgeous beets.  Having never cooked beets before and not being a fan of the awful, pickled variety, I was really looking forward to dipping my toe in the beet water… so to speak.

The general consensus was that roasted beets yielded the most flavor and would provide a rich, sweet experience.

I looked over very, very many recipes and decided to mix the best of everything that I found.  Here’s what I did:

Beets
2 bunches of beets
1/4 c. evoo (Yes, I’ve succumbed - it’s just too long to write it out the other way - I may change my mind, though)
Kosher salt

Pre-heat oven to 350.  Scrub the hell out of the beets, removing the stems and greens and keeping aside.  Trim the top and bottom of the beet.  Place in a small roasting pan, pour the oil over it.  Sprinkle with a nice big pinch of salt and toss with your hands to coat. Cover with foil and bake, 40-65 minutes, depending on the size and freshness of your beets.  Mine took 55 minutes until I could easily insert a fork into the biggest one.

Greens
The greens from the beets
4 cloves of garlic chopped
2 T. evoo

Fill a bowl with cool water if your greens are a bit wilted and let them soak to fluff them up a bit.  When your beets are almost done, drain the greens and cut off any tough stems (I skipped this part and had some tough ends on the plate, so I really would recommend this).  Heat a small pan on med/high heat.  Add the oil and when it ribbons add the garlic.  When the garlic is ever so slightly golden, add the greens and stir and toss till greens are wilted.

I took a shallow serving dish and placed the greens in the bottom with the beets on top of them.  It was a family style, everyone serve yourself meal.  We had grilled steak and I made a salad of curly leaf lettuce, yellow and red tomatoes tossed with a simple balsamic vinaigrette (shallot chopped, 2 parts balsamic, 1 part evoo).

It really was a perfectly balanced plate.  Everything complimented each other, and the beets…  Oh the beets.  They were sweet and very satisfying, on top of the garlicky greens.  Yeah.  This was good.