Beetroot Relish

As I was rather enthusiastic about the beet greens at the market I ended up with an abundance of baby beets and there are only so many roasted beets one can endure. So with a glut (16 golf ball sized beets) left in the fridge and really not wanting anything to go to waste a canning plan was made. This is pretty much a what do I have in my vegetable draw that needs using and is going to work well together plan. I got a large jar into a 100°C oven to sterilize whilst I prepared the relish.


Get a pot on to a medium heat and add 1 cup of cider vinegar and 1 cup of soft brown sugar. To this add a couple of whole dried chillies, a few allspice berries and grate in a decent thumb of ginger. Bring this to a simmer so the sugar can dissolve. Next grate an apple, granny smith, a medium sized fennel bulb and all of the beets. Add the vegetables to the pot and season with a bit of salt, cover and simmer for about 20–30 minutes, taste and adjust the seasoning. I don't like too much loose liquid, and the beets should be cooked and tender not mushy, so keep it simmering until there's only a small amount of thick syrup left loose, about another 20 minutes. Pour the hot mixture into the sterilised jar and do the lid up tightly, let it cool before storing in the fridge, it should keep for a couple of months, if it lasts that long.

Red rice salad

I must admit I don’t get to the Sunday markets as often as I’d like, maybe it’s living all the way in the back end of Karori, or just pure and simple laziness, but quite often best laid plans end up being a coffee and eggs on the couch, or if it’s a sunny day, the couch, who am I kidding! When I do manage to drag myself and better half out of the house at a halfway decent hour to hit the markets I always vow I must come every week and proclaim about how much we’re missing out on, which is completely and utterly true. Well we managed it last Sunday, and I managed to latch on to possibly one of my favourite greens, beet tops, unfortunately almost never seen on a supermarket vegetable shelf, well not in good nick anyway. Sautéed and mixed with ricotta and hazelnuts, they make a great ravioli filling, or as below a great addition to a salad.


Red Rice Salad
1 cup red rice
½ cup hazelnuts
capers (in salt)
1 fennel bulb
1 red onion
1 large purple carrot
1 celery stalk
1 large bunch of beet greens
1 clove of garlic
Handful of parsley and celery greens

Place the rice in a pot and pour in 3 cups of water, bring to a boil, put on a lid, reduce to a simmer and cook for about 30 minutes. Strain and toss in some good oil (olive or hazelnut), season with a salt, mustard and cider vinegar. I like to dress the rice now so I know the base is well seasoned and will only need tweaking at the end.


Get a pan on a medium high heat, slice up the beet greens, crush the garlic. Heat a dash of oil in the pan, sauté the garlic but don’t brown, toss in the beet greens and cover. Cook until tender. Toss the greens through the rice.

The rest is pretty straight forward. Roughly chop the hazelnuts and toast in a dry pan. Slice and dice the fennel, onion and celery. Soak the capers. Either grate or use a mandolin on the carrot. Finely chop the parsley and celery greens.

Toss all the ingredients together, taste and season with salt (smoked salt is really good with these earthy flavours), adjust the acid with some cider vinegar, and a little heat doesn’t go amiss add a dash of hot sauce if you like.

Tasty wee beets

It does take a little forethought and preparation to make the tastiest beetroot ever, and maybe a little more thought on what you’re going to use them for, as they are utterly transformed by the end. I haven’t really taken another serious look at them since making beetroot “tartare” but had an itch to scratch and quite a few good looking beetroot wanting to be used. There was no clear outcome with what to do with the finished product, just a desire to make it.

The beetroot are placed in a casserole dish with some aromatics, cinnamon, fennel, coriander seeds and a few cloves, dish is covered and placed in a moderate oven for an hour or so, until the beets are cooked through. Remove from the oven and let cool until you can handle the beetroot without burning yourself. Turn the oven down to 50/60ºC. Peel the beets and place on a lined tray, return to the now cool oven and leave to dehydrate for about 12 hours.


The beetroot will of shrivelled up and concentrated its flavour, it’ll be a bit dry and sticky on the outside. Place the beetroot in a bag and place in the fridge, the moisture should equalise through out the beetroot.


I puréed one of the beets with sour cream, seasoned it well and added a little acid to brighten it up. The sauce made a great addition to a tortilla with mashed garlicky peas, pickled kohlrabi, tomato salsa and some spicy grilled skirt steak.

Duck confit with beets

Well the long wait for the confit to age in the fridge is over, the legs had been submerged in the duck fat for a little over two months and it was well and truly time to dig them out and roast them up. You don’t need to age your confit, but doing so intensifies the gamey ducky flavour. The crispy duck leg was served up with a pan seared pickled beet salad and a beet gastrique made using the cider vinegar that pickled the beets.

The night before beetroot was wrapped up in tinfoil along with some aromatics, allspice, cinnamon and peppercorns, baked in a moderate oven until tender then left to cool. When cool enough to handle, unpack the beets and rub off the skin, slice into bite size wedges, place in a container and cover with cider vinegar and a little salt. Refrigerate overnight.


To make the gastrique, slowly caramelize some sugar in a pan and then pour in an equal quantity of the pickling vinegar and a couple sprigs of thyme. Let the liquid reduce to a syrup, but don’t reduce to far. Pick out the thyme sprigs, and set the sauce aside.


Preheat the oven to about 220°C and get a oven proof sauté pan on a high heat. Dig out the legs from the fat and carefully scrape off and excess fat. Place the legs skin side down in the searingly hot pan and cook for a few minutes then transfer to the oven for about 5 minutes. Place the legs on a board and set aside to rest for a couple of minutes.

While the duck is resting, toast some hazelnuts and sauté the sliced beetroot in some olive oil until caramelised. Toss all together with some chopped parsley.

Venison and Beet Salad

It’s always a pleasure when you’re presented with a little wild fare, such as the beautiful venison filet the other half (now wife) came home with after a laborious day up in Masterton working on the farm. Equally as pleasurable is when a plan comes straight to mind what to do with such a tasty piece of meat. I set about making room in the fridge so the fillet could have a little room to age and dry a little. It was sliced in equal halves and one went straight in the fridge for a few days, and the other ended up in a bag with 1% salt (by weight), brown sugar, thyme, and juniper, to cure for 24 hours or so before being patted dry and joining its uncovered other half to dry and age a little, they ended up in the fridge for about six days.


The fillets were taken out of the fridge about half an hour before cooking, and a pan put on a high heat, with what one could describe as a f*#k tonne of butter, because butter makes the world better. When the butter had finally calmed down, stopped foaming and spitting, the uncured portion went in the pan, seared golden brown, rolled around in it’s butter bath, then the cured portion went in about half way before the other piece was cooked and bathed in buttery goodness, in total they got about 6 and 4 minutes in the pan respectively, which resulted a perfectly rare temp.


As the meat was put aside to rest, a handful of diced shallots and thyme were liberally tossed into the pan to soften and perfume the butter before a splash of red wine and stock, we’re talking about equal parts butter, stock, wine, so quite good for you and your arteries, and especially your taste buds. It was left to reduce to a thick rich syrup and finally sieved.


A simple salad of roasted beets, toasted hazelnuts, ewe cheese and rocket tossed in a little olive oil was the perfect partner for the oh so rich gamey meat, with the two distinct textures and flavours of the cured (left) and uncured (right), and not forgetting the ever so rich pan glaze that brought everything together. Now I just need to get my hands on more of the venison goodness!

Beetroot Tartare

I can’t believe I haven’t posted about these great beets before, I came across the method on Ideas in Food back in January, they took beetroot cooked it until tender and then dehydrated it, not so dehydrated it’s a crisp dry husk but soft, chewy, and sweet. Recently I had been thinking about these beets and what to do with them, I wanted to make a simple dish that really let the flavour of the beetroot shine, but add a couple of complementing flavours, what I ended up with is a ‘tartare’ of beetroot with ewe’s milk feta and rather food geekily olive oil powder*.

Firstly the beetroot needs to be cooked until tender, you can either steam them or as I usually do put them in a casserole dish with a few aromatics and a splash of wine, cover and put in a medium oven until fork tender, 40–60 minutes.

Remove the beetroot from the dish and allow to cool until you can handle them, then peel.


Set the oven to 65°C, or use a dehydrator if you have one. Place beets on a tray in the oven for about 12 hours. Then allow to cool and place in a bag in the fridge to allow the juices to equalise throughout the vegetable and the outer layer to rehydrate.


Finely dice the beetroot and serve a round with some olive oil powder* and ewe’s feta ‘grated’ through a sieve, and maybe a little thyme.

* Olive oil powder is made by blending together Tapioca Maltodextrin (N-Zorbit) with olive oil, then passing through a sieve. Use 1 part N-Zorbit to 3 parts Fat by weight. N-Zorbit is crazy light, 1 litre = 100 grams.

Hare

Some things are just too good to pass up, especially a pair of hare legs for less than eight bucks! Hare is probably my favourite game meat, lean dark rich flesh. Cooked well it’s wonderfully soft and tender, but get it wrong it is quite frankly crap, either stringy and dry, tough as old boots, or make the the mistake of over cooking it can turn to mush. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a hard meat to cook, it’s just one that lets you know you did wrong by shouting at you. So when cooking take into consideration the leg muscle of the hare, it’s very lean and does a lot of work, so a slow braise is the best bet.

The bonus of it all is that hare meat has strong flavour that can stand up to some hefty complementary flavours, such as, in this case a good strong red wine, port sauce, and some awesome baby beetroot (greens and all, thank you for not chopping them off) as acompaniament.

You’re going to have to forgive the lack of measurements, as the best I could do for you is use enough of each ingredient and you won’t go wrong.

Ingredients
Hare legs
Carrots, diced
Onion, diced
Garlic, crushed
Thyme
Bay leaves
Dijon mustard
Tomato paste
Juniper berries
Flour
Paprika, hot
Salt & pepper

• Dredge the hare legs in some flour seasoned with hot paprika, salt and pepper, shaking of any excess flour.
• Brown the legs on all sides in a hot pan with a little olive oil.
• Lay the legs on a bed of thyme, bay leaf and juniper in a casserole dish.
• In the same pan sautée the onion, carrot and garlic until soft.
• Deglaze the pan with a splash of port and stir through some tomato paste and mustard.
• Pour in the red wine (enough to cover the hare in the dish you’re cooking them in), bring to a simmer.
• Pour over the hare.
• Cover the dish with a double layer of foil and cook at 160°C for 2–3 hours, until tender.

Beet Purée
Peel beetroot and steam it until fork tender.
Purée.

Pickled Beet
Cider vinegar
Thyme
Sugar

• Slice the beets paper thing (use a mandoline).
• Heat the vinegar with thyme and sugar until simmering.
• Pour the vinegar over the beet slice and let steep.

Beet greens
Really simple one, heat butter in pan until foamy, sautée the beet greens, done.

Polenta
Instant polenta
Stock
Crème fraîche

Bring 500ml Chicken stock to the boil, remove from the heat and whisk in 125 grams of instant polenta, keep whisking until thick, you may have to put it back on the heat for a couple of seconds, but usually it isn’t needed. Add half a tub of crème fraîche and whisk in until fully incorporated.


Plate up
Spoon a pillow of polenta with the greens placed in the centre, deboned hare leg placed on top with the sieved cooking juices spooned over. Arrange beet purée and pickled beet slices around the plate.

Wrapped up...

Had some tasty skirt steak last night, coated in white pepper, coriander, garlic and chili powder. Grilled it on the stove and finished in the oven. We had it in tortillas with a raw beetroot salad and sour cream.

Beetroot Salad: Peel and julianne Beets, grate in carrot, thinly sliced spinach, dress with oil, lemon and mustard.