Let The Beets Drop

Beet salad has been a popular one as of late.  One of my favorites I've had recently was at Trenchermen.  They slow roast their beets (overnight at 175 degrees) so they get chewy and intensely sweet.  As an added bonus, you get the aroma of the beets in your house for the entire cooking process.  I decided to combine this with elements I liked from Beet Salad at Topolobampo and Aria.  At Trencherman they combined the slow roasted beets with your good old fashioned roasted beets.  I wanted to feature the raw beets to add additional crispness to the salad.  Yeah I know twelve hours is a lot of time to put in for beet salad, but it is worth it.

Ingredients

• Two bunches beets (About 1.5 pounds) (Save the greens)
• 5 oz Arugula
• 8 oz Goat Cheese
• 1/3 Cup hazelnuts.

Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette

• One Meyer Lemon (If you cant find them you can substitute a regular lemon with a teaspoon of orange juice)
• 1 tsbp Fresh Chopped Dill
• 2 Teaspoons champagne vinegar
• 1/3 Cup Good quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil (I usually keep two types of olive oil on hand.  One rather expensive bottle, that I use whenever I'm making salad dressing, or anything that I'm not heating the oil for.  The other, still Extra Virgin, I use for cooking at low heat, because the nuances in flavor of the better quality Olive oils tend to die in the heat)

Step 1: Toast the Hazelnuts.  I've learned over the years, that even though I'm a pretty decent cook when it comes to toasting anything, it needs my undivided attention unless I want something burnt.  You can toast the nuts in a small pan over medium heat stirring until fragrant.  No matter how tempted you are don't step away.  They will burn, you will be mad, and have to start over.  Then give those nuts a rough chop.

Other Longer and Probably happened first Step 1a:  Slow roast half the beets.  Remove the greens from the beets and the tops.  Don't trow away those tops though Beet greens are awesome.  Cut half of the beets into  steak fry shaped pieces (The best way I can think of describing it off the top of my head).  Loosely wrap them in aluminum foil allowing a couple of inches of open space to vent and let them go for a solid 12 hours in the oven at 175 degrees.

Step 2: Peel and julienne the other half of the beets. I love Oxo and their Good Grips Mandoline Slicer makes quick work of this.  If you're not a cooking enthusiast and spending $99 on a slicer seems absurd to you, then do not despair.  I have a few more tricks up my sleeve.  One, is using the vegetable peeler, make ribbons out of the beets once you've peeled them.  Another method is to blanch them in boiling water for a minute and evacuate them into an ice bath for julienne by hand.  My knife skills aren't that great and there is no way that I would get the julienne of a beet as small as the mandoline slicer can get by hand.  The blanching isn't necessary, it just gets the beet slightly easier to cut.


Step 3: Make the vinaigrette.  Add in salt and pepper, as well as the zest from the lemon at the end of your whisking.   The lemon juice goes in at the beginning.  The mustard which is suggested in the video is not needed.

Step 4: It's a salad so put everything together.

Bonus:  Some of my favorite ways to eat beet greens are as follows:
Sauteed in bacon fat. (Hey you're eating veggies you can afford to have a little bacon)
Sauteed with a little garlic and olive oil.
Finely chopped for next mornings Omelette.