As far as cooking goes, beets are really wonderful because you can use both the greens and the roots to make completely different dishes. This week I started toying with that idea and ended up with a combination of oven-roasted beets (and other tasty root vegetables) and sautéed greens. These dishes are lovely on their own, but also delicious (my favorite) when served together.

I love this dish and wanted to share it, so I’ve decided to do is to post a few recipes in this blog in hopes of sharing and getting some feedback. I’d love to hear what you think!

Oven-Roasted Beets with Sautéed Greens

Ingredients:
A bunch of beets, including the greens
3 or 4 (or more, if you like) baby turnips, peeled and cut in chunks
6-8 fingerling potatoes
Olive oil
Sea salt
Freshly ground pepper
2 tsp butter (optional)
Kale
Mushrooms, sliced
Garlic, sliced
Balsamic vinegar

Instructions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.

Wash the beets and trim the greens (leaving an inch or so of the stalks attached to the beets) and set aside. You want to keep the beetroot intact, so that lovely color doesn’t run and turn the other vegetables pink.  Put the beets, turnips and potatoes in an oven-safe baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper, and toss to coat. Roast in the oven for 45 minutes to one hour, until vegetables are soft (a knife will slide in and out easily).

Meanwhile, wash the beet greens and kale (discarding the kale stems) and tear or roughly chop into bite-sized pieces. Wash and slice mushrooms. Slice the garlic.

When the root vegetables are nearly done, heat butter and olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. When the butter stops sizzling, add the mushrooms and sauté until soft. (Note: if you don’t want to use butter, you can just use olive oil instead. I just happen to like the flavor combination of mushrooms and butter). Add the sliced garlic and sauté until it begins to turn golden. Add the greens and sauté until they turn bright green and begin to wilt. Remove from stove; add a sprinkle of balsamic vinegar and toss.

Arrange the greens on a plate and place oven-roasted vegetables on top. At this point, I like to rub the beets to remove the skin and then slice the beets before placing them on the greens.

Go Beets!

Look Before You Leap
 
This is very important: If you’re using a recipe, read through it—in its entirety—first, thereby eliminating one of those “Oh, rats (or your favorite expletive)!” moments when you realize too late that you were supposed to chill, soak or otherwise prepare something ahead of time—or that the cooking time exceeds the time by which your guests will be arriving by several hours. Trust me. You’ll thank me for this.
This is also the time to make sure you have all the ingredients—or if you don’t, you can decide what substitutions you’re brave enough to make.

Get it Together

Get your ingredients together before you start cooking. In accordance with my Virgo nature, I line them all up on the counter in the order in which I’ll be using them. You can line them up any way you want to; the important thing is to get all your ingredients in front of you, so you can do a headcount. Make sure you have everything—and enough of it.
To simplify the cleaning-up process, I put away each item after I’ve used it. By the time I’m finished, all my ingredients have either been used or put away! 

Wash and Go

The clean-up-as-you-go method works really well for all your pots, pans and utensils, too. I use whatever spare seconds I have to quickly wash up any items I’m done with so I won’t have a huge mess to contend with when I’m done.

These are the tricks and tips that work for me—feel free to share your own!
 

Case in point…

The first time I made dinner for a boy was a disaster. Food this bad should be outlawed. Seriously. But there I was—17 and feeling pretty cocky about my mad kitchen skills. The challenge? His favorite—homemade macaroni and cheese. From scratch. No recipe required. How hard could it be? Make the mac, throw in the cheese along with some other mac-n-cheese-friendly stuff, stick in the oven and wait.

What could happen?

Right. Let me paint a picture to illustrate the magnitude of my glorious catastrophe. Imagine a tasteless mess of mushy macaroni floating in a milky sea bobbing with clumps of separated cheese chunks. Now sprinkle on some half soggy, half crispy breadcrumbs and you’ve got the idea…

Is she really writing a cookbook?

What I love about that all-too-true story is that I was fearless. I’d never considered failure as an option and so I didn’t see it as one. We laughed and moved on. The defining aspect of that moment is that it didn’t define me as a lousy cook.

If I could make a meal that bad, then I knew I had in me the potential for something really good. After all, every action has an equal and opposite reaction…

A Happy Accident

I may not have bastardized any comfort food lately, but I can still make a damned good mistake. For instance, that last minute addition to a dinner party when I decided the menu had to include broccoli slaw (btw, there has to be a better name for this—I’m taking suggestions).  Except of course, I had used the ingredients—the ones I “knew” I had—in other dishes. There was not so much as a drop of yogurt, the raisins had disappeared into thin air and every last slivered almond was spoken for.

So I made it up as I went along. My homemade mayonnaise (with a splash of apple cider vinegar and some sucanat) replaced the yogurt and I found water chestnuts were a delightful replacement for the crunch of the almonds. As far as those wayward raisins, I simply substituted dried cranberries. Voila! An accidental success!

Don’t let preconceived notions or a fear of failure keep you out of the kitchen. Have fun! Go wild! And remember, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re not cooking!

For this and other recipes, sign up for my newsletter, using the form on the right.