Tags
Around My French Table, beet pickles, beet salad, Dorie Greenspan, food from scratch, food revolution, Food Revolution Day, fresh veggies, golden beets, making wholesome food, pickled eggs, vegetarian
It’s Food Revolution AND French Fridays with Dorie today!! WOW!!
So I’ve got an exciting recipe to share with y’all but first let me explain a little bit about what Food Revolution Day is.
Food Revolution Day is a global awareness day of sharing good food and kitchen skills. There has been a major push the past few years to get back to local food sources, to make “real” or unprocessed foods for your family and to re-learn those dusty skills that are long forgotten or hardly used. This means something different for each person but in every case, I’m sure we all have our crutch for processed “quick” foods in today’s busy world and while making “real” food may take a little longer, it is certainly something that we should all aim to do more of! For me, that means getting away from making microwaveable Kraft Mac-n-Cheese for my daughter and making it from scratch as I love to do “when I have time.” And each time I watch that litltle bowl of Mac-n-Cheese rotate in the microwave, I vow to make her “real” mac and cheese “next time.” That’s most of us, isn’t it?
I can’t count the number of times we have been too tired to cook and thrown a frozen pizza into the oven instead of making something wholesome, from scratch. Even if it’s just a sandwich. But gone are the days where most families know how to make a cheese sauce for their pasta to make their own mac-n-cheese at home and Food Revolution Day is about arming each person with the skills necessary to cook healthy, local and wholesome food for yourself and your family!
For the past few weeks, I have mulled over which recipe I would like to share for Food Revolution Day and after discussing it at length with my husband, we chose a recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s “Around My French Table” that changed our families eating habits and took it one step further.
~~Pickling!~~
Pickling is a great way to preserve the fresh veggies that we get out of our garden or pick up at the farmer’s market that we get local produce at each week and they make for great appetizers and sides in your lunch!
One recipe that added a neglected vegetable back to our rotation were the two beet salad recipes that are in “Around My French Table.” My husband especially loves the beet salad with “Icy Red Onion” best and our favorite pickled beet recipe includes red onions, so we thought we would simply pickle the beet salad so that we could have it all the time! And to surprise my husband, who loves nearly anything pickled, I added hard boiled eggs to the mix since they are a favorite of both my husband and Mei!
We have really been lucking out and finding some great, organic golden beets lately so I decided to use them because they are a happy, sunny color and many people forget about the golden beets! I think they even have a slightly sweeter flavor and don’t have that woody taste or texture that the regular red beets tend to have during the summer months.
Let’s do this step-by-step! Let’s make Sunny Pickled Beets & Eggs!
Ingredients:
- Beets (1-2 lbs)
- One or two onions (use white or yellow onions for golden beets and red onions for red beets)
- 4-6 hard boiled eggs, peeled
- 2 C vinegar
- 1 C sugar
- 3 tsp kosher salt
- 2 C water
First, give your beets a quick rinse, getting off any mud & dirt then trim the greens. Preheat the oven to 425F.
Emily helping me wash and rinse beets!
Cut lengths of foil, just long enough to fully wrap each beet individually. If you have a few smaller beets, they can be wrapped in pairs. Place your foil-wrapped beets on a foil-lined baking sheet and slip into your pre-heated oven for 40-90 minutes.
After 40 minutes, check your beets by piercing each with a knife or skewer and if it slips easily through the center of the beet, then it is ready to be taken out of the oven. If you feel resistance or the knife doesnt easily pierce the center of the beet, continue to roast the beets at ten minute intervals until the centers can be easily pierced.
Once the beets have roasted thoroughly, allow them to cool until they can be handled. I like to roast off the beets in the morning and come back to them after lunch when they are room-temperature.
Peel back the foil wrapping, scraping the skin off the beet as you go. The foil is abrasive enough to remove any tough bits of skin that are determined to stay on your beet and you will also avoid temporarily, dying your hands while removing the skins. Place the peeled beets on a cutting board.
Slice the beets as you like; the goal is to make them bite-size. We like to cut smaller beets into wedges, quartering each beet and for larger beets, we will wedge them into quarters then slice each quarter into more manageable, bite-size pieces. But cut them as you like to eat them!
Once the beets are sliced, place them into a container large enough to hold four cups of pickling solution, one onion and 4-6 eggs.
Next, slice the onions. I like to chop them in half then slice 1/4 inch slices off of each half. Add them to your sliced beets.
Get out a medium saucepan and add the vinegar, sugar, kosher salt and water to it. Heat the ingredients over high heat, stirring constantly until the sugar and salt are completely dissolved.
Pour this mixture over the beets and onions. Add the peeled, hard-boiled eggs, completely submerging each egg in the pickling solution. Allow the mixture to cool completely to room temperature before covering it securely and refrigerating it. It will need to sit in the fridge for three days to fully pickle. But don’t worry, it will be completely worth the wait!
Once the pickled beets, onions and eggs are ready to eat, we simply whip up Dorie’s vinaigrette to drizzle over top of it and chow down! We eat these at least two or three times a week with dinner, as a cold appetizer or even for dessert when we aren’t interested in something sweet and it hits the spot every time!
Ingredients: for Vinagrette
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- 1 tsp honey
- 1 TBS of pickling liquid
- 2 TBS extra-virgin olive oil
- salt and pepper, to taste
- minced fresh oregano (optional)
Put the mustard, honey, vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper in a small jar or a small Tupperware and shake until the dressing is emulsified or whisk in a bowl. Drizzle over the beets or toss in a bowl, sprinkle the minced oregano on top if desired and enjoy chilled!
I especially love the ombre effect the pickling liquid has on the egg, going form a sunny yellow along the edges and paling as you approach the yolk and the taste is phenomenal! Or so I’m told. I’m actually not that into pickled eggs, so Mei and I just keep a few hard-boiled eggs in a Tupperware to have with our meals and let the hubby indulge in all the pickled eggs he likes!
Check out what Food Revolution recipes and skills the other Doristas have chosen to share with you this week, there are some truly fabulous ones out there and if it doesn’t send you running into the kitchen to try some out – you may consider picking up a copy of Dorie Greenspan’s “Around My French Table” to see what other delicious bites could be had!
