Last night I made this with red beets and garlic greens. Today, the farmstand only had golden beets and regular garlic.
The red beets have better color, but the golden beets may be just a little tastier. The garlic greens are definitely superior in this dish to the regular cloves. So here’s the recipe:
Beets (enough)
Bunch garlic greens*
2 ears corn
1 package fresh pasta sheet
Splash of white balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper to taste
Parmesean cheese to taste
1) Remove roots and greens from beets and then boil beets until just soft. Drain. Use fingers to wipe off all peel, chop beets into chunks.
2) Chop garlic greens into 1-inch chunks. Slice knife down raw corn cob to remove kernals. Reserve any of the milk that comes off the cob.
3) Slice rolled past sheet into rounds and then unroll them. You should have long strips. It’s fine if they’re uneven. Start a large stockpot full of salted water to boil.
4) Saute greens in butter until just carmelized. Add beets. Cook until beets are completely soft. Add corn and olive oil as needed.
5) Boil pasta. When it’s almost ready, add a ladle-full of the pasta water and a spalsh of vinegar to the vegetables, then add al dente pasta and cover and let steam over low heat. Stir, season as desired. Serve with Parmesean, if desired.
* Garlic greens are the top of the garlic plant. The white cloves are the root and the greens spring up through the tops. Farmers thin out garlic plants and have lots of those greens left, which are an annoyance to them and a treat to eat. They’re delicious grilled with a little olive oil and butter.
have you ever tried roasting the beets? you wrap them in foil and bake them on a cookie sheet until they’re tender. they are so silky and intense that way!
Cybercita– I’ve never worked with fresh beets before now. I had to ask the farmer how to cook them! She suggested the roasting, but said she liked the flavor better boiled, so I went with it. Also, it’s finally hot so I don’t want the oven on.
But I am intrigued. I love beets. Do you think it would work on the grill?
i have a little convection/toaster oven that i’ve been using for small jobs, like baking a potato, so that i don’t have to blast my oven in the heat. {although new york has been freakishly rainy of late… i keep thinking a giant hand picked us up and dumped us on the left coast while we weren’t looking}.
i don’t see why it wouldn’t work on the grill. i would just wrap them well in foil, and keep them well out of direct heat so they don’t burn, because roasting a fist sized beet takes about an hour. let me know how it turns out. i also read that if you cube them and then roast them on a cookie sheet, they’re even better, since they get nicely caramelized. i have yet to try that.
i vastly prefer the taste of roasted beets to boiled, i have to say.
i’m with you on the garlic scapes. just delicious! i love them in scrambled eggs.
We love our beets cubed and sauteed in butter with fresh ginger until they are caramelized. They get crunchy on the outside and soft in the middle. I never knew I liked beets until we got the recipe from our CSA last summer.
As for your tweet about Palin, I had been hoping that you would be able to explain the it from a political point of view. I don’t understand how quitting in the middle of a governorship would make her a more viable candidate for the presidency in 2012. Why would I want to vote for a quitter? I keep waiting for some other explanation. Like it was a preemptive move to leave office before something nasty comes out?
Okay, I’m definitely going to try sauteening in butter and ginger. I LOVE beets, I think it may be a New England thing, I’m not sure. But this is my first time working with them fresh.
In terms of Palin, I think her argument is that she doesn’t want to be a lame duck. Ie. a politician who has no clout because she will not be in office in six months and everyone knows it. She believes in term limits, which many conservatives do, so would not run for another term. She argues that by resigning she is sparing her state a lame duck. Presumably the Lieutenant Governor replacing her intends to run again so would in theory be more powerful. But that’s kind of dumb because the whole point of supporting term limits is that you don’t want politicians to get too powerful, and if she passes the mantle this way she is really furthering her own dynasty.
I suspect it’s probably a preemptive move to keep something out of the media, or just that something in her personal life requires her attention.
The other possibility is that she has her eye on a Senate run. But, there her problem will be that she would be a Senator one year before trying for the presidency and she’s just spent three months talking about how inadequate that is for the presidency.
She does think she is a viable candidate for 2012, but I personally think she’s high on antelope chips if she thinks that. She is effective and well loved for her constituency, but doesn’t really understand how very narrow her constituency is. She has no appeal outside of it.
Anyway, Becky, I can’t explain anything about Palin, that’s as little as I know about any of it.