Betteraves or beets!

Penulis : Unknown on Sunday, 22 May 2011 | 23:36

One of the things I love most about France is how the French eat in harmony with the seasons. Beets have begun to make their appearance at the local markets. Betteraves or beets, an excellent source of potassium, folic acid and magnesium, a delicious and incredibly healthy vegetable.

And they come in several colors!

Here in France, you can get them pretty much all year round, precooked and hermetically sealed in plastic. With these, I love to make a simple Beet Tapenade to spread on crackers, thinly sliced baguette or simply dip with a chip.

Take your precooked beet, cut it up in rough chunks and toss in your mixer.

Add a little olive oil

salt

pepper

and mix!

Beet Tapenade, so simple and it adds a real zest of color to an aperitif.

Yesterday, I rummaged through Epicurious.com's beet recipes and the following caught my eye, I made it yesterday and it was exquisite!

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

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 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. 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.

I popped the beets in the oven to roast while I did a little (ahem, a lot of!) housecleaning.

Aidan, over at Conjugating Irregular Verbs cooked up some beets yesterday on her Seasonal Sunday blog. Her recipe looks great, but then again, everything she cooks looks great!

I found a huge amount of truly varied recipes for beets on a French website. Remember, you only have to copy and paste the recipe into Google Translate to have the translation plus conversion.

Betteraves are used more often than you would think in cooking. Here are a few photos to make your mouth water:

Shredded cooked beets served with tender baby greens and goat cheese melted on toast.