The Beet Goes On…

Tomorrow I’ll be doing something a bit unusual, I’ve heard. I’ll be writing lots of equations (so far so normal), but I’ll be doing it on a stage and will be filmed doing it. Should be fun. It’s for an educational TV show that’ll be out some time soon. Will tell you more when I know more. My task later on is to figure out which equations they’d like on camera. It’s been a long day, so I thought I’d sit here with some camomile tea and blog a bit first.

It’s been a while since we’ve been to the kitchen together, hasn’t it? Let me tell you about Monday’s special dish. I was invited by a friend to go to their house and join some others for a Rosh Hashanah gathering. The instruction was to “bring a side dish of your choosing”. Excellent. Well, I’m out of figs now (the main tree has run out of them after a remarkable season), and so could not rely on that. The big problem was really that on Monday I teach until 7:00pm (ugh), and I’d have to go home first to get the food. I certainly could not rely on being able to cook a meal and take it immediately since I’d have about 15 minutes to make everything and get it to my friend’s place. So I needed something good, but something simple and fast.

For some reason I decided on oranges. I don’t really know why. I thought I might do something with oranges, sliced, and then maybe some fresh mint from my garden could be involved as an accompaniment. That’s 10 minutes prep time right there. Why not? Then I decided I’d think a bit more while in the farmer’s market on Sunday. Before going I thought I’d google a bit about oranges and mint. Had I come up with this out of the blue? Are there interesting dishes already out there that did a similar thing? Without a doubt. Worth a check for more ideas. I rapidly found a number of references to a salad involving oranges, mint, and beets. Excellent. Love beets. I’d get some beets in the market, along with a bag of oranges. With a ready supply of great ingredients, wonderful dishes can be assembled in minutes.

It’s a lovely combination of flavours, enhancing what I had in mind quite nicely. It is as simple as breathing, and a lot of preparation can be done before. So on Sunday night while doing other things I put a lot of the beets to bake. Just topped and tailed them and wrapped them up between two layers of foil in a baking dish and popped them into the preheated oven at 400 F until, after about half an hour (depending upon the size of your beets -mine were medium) they are more or less presenting only half hearted resistance to being poked through with a sharp paring knife.

Then I peeled the skins off and chopped them up into slices about half a centimeter thick, sometimes dividing them in two to keep things bite sized. I covered them and put them into the fridge. I used about five or six medium beets. A simple baked beet is such a tasty thing. Purple goodness leaking everywhere. I covered them and put them into the refrigerator.

Step two was to get the oranges ready. This is fiddlier, and I did this before leaving for work on Monday morning. I cut a slice off the top and bottom, just exposing the flesh, and then cut down the sides. Then there’s nothing for it but to get involved with a sharp knife removing the segments from the membranes (you’ve done a lot of it if you do those initial cuts properly) and collecting the tasty segments together in a bowl. I used about four of these medium-sized (navel) oranges that I got. Sweet and fresh as new love, they were.

I chopped up a red onion lengthwise and made some nice coarse long fragments out of it. Cutting across the grain would give the usual rings that then break into small segments. Did not want that, so went for the lengthwise. Better texture. I ran out into the garden with a pair of scissors and got a couple of lengths of fresh mint from my almost endless supply. After washing them I pulled off the leaves, patted them dry, and put them aside.

Well, that’s the prep, more or less. Upon finishing my class and a bus and bike trip home later, I grabbed a shower, changed, and went into the kitchen. Preparation of the salad was easy. Just toss all those things together with some salt and pepper to taste. I put a super tiny bit of the orange juice that had seeped out of the segments into it too, but reserved most of it so as not to make the whole thing a mushy mess. About a tablespoonful of virgin olive oil sealed the deal. Toss. Put it into a nice bowl that has a cover, and took it over to my friend’s place for an evening of pleasant celebration and conversation.

There was lots of good food there, brought by many, and cooked by the host. The salad fit rather nicely. It was delicious.

-cvj