Ok, so Nancy made this great mixed grilled veggie dish the other day that included grilled peppers, potatoes, fennel, and beets. The beets she got for the dish came with full, healthy looking tops that towered 20 inches over the tubers.
A little googling and I found that not only are beet greens good food, but swiss chard is basically just beets grown for above ground food rather than sweet tubers.
Now, how to cook the darn things....
I ignored all recipes and suggestions from the web and simply treated them the way I do broccoli rabe.
Wash the greens well and then roughly chop greens and stems. Don't dry them well; you will want the little bit of water that clings to them to help them cook.
In a heavy pot (make it a big one...my bunch of raw beet tops/stems probably came to about 8cups) heat some olive oil over medium high heat. Maybe 1/3 cup.
Once the oil is good and hot, toss in about 6-8 cloves of garlic roughly chopped and a couple of shakes of red pepper flake. Let this cook until the garlic is just beginning to brown and very fragrant, then dump in all of your chopped beet tops.
Once the beet tops are in, toss the whole works (tongs work best for this). Your pot will have cooled down quite a bit from all of the cold ingredient you just dumped in. Leave heat on med/high until you see/hear signs that it has heated back up. Once the pan heats back up, bring the flame down to medium and let the whole works cook, covered, for about 12-15 minutes.
MUST USE SALT...Do not think of your blood pressure with this. Give it a generous pinch of good quality sea salt, taste, etc.
This turned out really good. The beet stems have a little bit of earthy sweetness, but the greens have a nice bitter bite. We both agreed that this could easily be our new regular broccoli rabe substitute. If one were a meat eater, a bit of bacon or fatback would probably pull this together nicely and eliminate the need for additional salt.
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