Roasted HeartBeets Valentines' Day Appetizer

Posted by amanda in appetizer, beet, budget, cheese, chevre, easy, healthy, mint, recipe, roast, valentines day, vegetable, vegetarian

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Special occasion dinners are divine, but they can also put a lot of pressure on people who are used to eating out of tupperware to make a multi-course meal on real dinnerware (i.e. me). I'm always on the lookout for fun appetizers that make me look like a better cook than I am, and this year I've happened upon a winning combination. The combination of foods isn't a terribly original one (beets and chevre have a long standing and delicious history), but this is a cute visual twist on a safe taste combination that will dress up a dinner in a heartbeat ;) Though this dish is commonly served as a salad, I think it makes an elegant appetizer. It would pair nicely with the lobster dinner we're recommending, and would also be dressed up prettily by a glass of champagne! A nice bonus: beets are great for, you guessed it, your heart.


You'll want to prep your parts about 1.5 hours before serving: the beets need to cool once roasted, and you want to assemble no more than 30 minutes before you serve, so things don't try out or unravel too dramatically). I actually roasted and cooled my beets a whole day before prepping my dish - slicing mint and spreading chevre takes only a minute, and you only need to spend as long arranging your plates as you actually want to - assembly takes about 5 minutes let's say)






Appetizer for 2


Ingredients:

• 2-3 medium sized beets, peeled
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• Sea Salt
• 2 sprigs of fresh mint (depending on your servings and your mint...basically you want about 2.5-3 mint leaves per plate)
• a small pat of chevre (I know that's an incredibly vague measurement designation, so check out the final picture..basically you want to put down a little pillow of chevre to "plant" your heart-shaped beets in, so it's pretty much up to you.)

"Heart-beets" before roasting

Don't:
-Wear white. These hearts bleed.


Do:


-Preheat your oven to 375 (make sure your rack is on the middle rung)


-Notice that your peeled beets are already somewhat heart shaped. Slice the beets top to bottom (preserving this natural shape in the slices) in pieces about 1/4 inch thick.


-Using the preexistent shape, make small cuts to shape your beet slices into hearts


-In a bowl, toss the beets in the olive oil until coated


-Sprinkle the coated beets with a few dashes of sea salt


-Lay them out on a Pyrex (glass type?) baking dish or pan. Try to make enough room so that each beet has a surface on the bottom of the pan


-Roast for 35-40 minutes, checking every 10 minutes or so. Skinnier slices will roast faster, so feel free to take them out early (my littler hearts took more like 15 minutes), thicker ones could take as long as 40 minutes. Stir the beets every 10 minutes. When they're done they'll look glazed, but not crispy.


-When they're done, chill the beets covered in the fridge, for an hour.


Before serving:


-Using a knife, lay down a pat or "pillow" of chevre on a little plate; try to mold the pat into an angle, so the hearts will be supported "up" by the chevre, as in the first picture in this post.


-Using your knife, dig little wedges into the cheese, to place the heart in. The beets will dye the chevre pink where they touch it, so you can get creative with that if you want.

Stirred and delicious final product

-Slice your mint into strips, removing the stems. If you want to make little rosebuds of mint, roll a leaf (or stack of leaves) into a tube and slice across the tube. Pinch the little rolls (little minty cinnamon bun shapes) and plant them in the chevre around the hearts, or strew them like confetti if you prefer. It'll be pretty anyways :)


-Love all serve all!

Guilt Free Rutabaga Fries

Posted by amanda in easy, healthy, recipe, roast, rutabaga, vegan, vegetable, vegetarian

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Love French Fries but hate the thought of all the starch, carbs, various bad fats and total lack of nutritional benefit that go along with them? Get ready for rutabaga. Move over potato - this vegetable is part of the brassica family, which means it rubs shoulders with brocolli, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, and other nutritional heavyweights. Plus, rutabagas have just under half the calories of an equal amount of potato, less than a third of the carbs, and pack a whole lot of nutritional punch.

Rutabagas are full of Vitamin C (keep that scurvy at bay), potassium (hello lower blood pressure and lowered stroke risk), and have also been linked to the reduction of easy bruising (who knew!) and cataract formation.

Here's how to make rutabaga a part of your life without resorting to mashing it or realizing you're eating an almost turnip:

The first cut is the deepest: How to peel a rutabaga

Ok so to be fair..I wasn't sure either. First of all, this is what they look like pre-preparation:

I know what you're thinking: "that is not a food". But it is! And a damned good one. To get into it:

1. Rinse any dirt or wax off the outside of your 'baga.

2. Using a sharp but not too large knife (paring is good, but make sure it feels right), slice a disc of peel off the top and bottom of the vegetable.

3. Using a [in my case, butcher's] knife, cut your rutabaga in half, using the flats you created in step 2 to help this out.

4. Peel the vegetable using your paring knife, removing any tough parts (though these are fine to eat, they just taste different).

To be in 'baga french fry heaven: (preheat your over to 450)

1. Cut your halves into either slim wedges or thick french fries (they'll shrink in the oven)

2. Boil them in a pot for 3-4 minutes (at a full boil)

3. In a large bowl, toss them with canola oil (1 tbsp, but just barely) and as much salt as you like.

4. Grind a generous amount of fresh pepper over the sliced rutabaga.

5. Lay slices on a baking sheet avoiding overlap - I needed to use two different cookie sheets at one time.

6. After about 15-20 minutes (depending on your over), flip your fries. Don't be alarmed if they're getting black in spots, they're likely not burning inside at all.

7. After another 10 minutes, taste test, and take 'em out when they're cooked to your liking.

This should make between 4-6 servings of side fries, depending on the size of your original rutabaga.

Serve hot, with ketchup, vinegar, salt, or any variation thereof, and thank yourself for doing your body a favor.

A word about Spaghetti Squash

Posted by amanda in budget, healthy, pasta, recipe, roast, side, vegan, vegetable, vegetarian

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With the peak season of cold nights and dark mornings, it's time to get thinking about excuses to keep your oven turned on all evening. One of my best excuses is roasting something really huge and hard....right. Not to mention, spaghetti squash gives you a great excuse to wield a really big knife after a long day of whiny teenagers and public transpo employees (or maybe that's just me). But really, spaghetti squash is worth the minimal effort it requires, and last forever in your fridge. Plus, it really does live up to its name as a pasta substitute. Your waistline, and more importantly, your life-long body will thank you. So will your wallet: spaghetti squash goes for about 79 cents a pound, but I've found it in season for 99 cents a squash.

Preparation:

1. By hook or by crook, slice a spaghetti squash into two halves, length-wise. Don't be dauntedl; this is difficult, but not impossible. My suggestion is to saw into it a bit with a bread knife to give your butcher's knife some leverage. Like I said, by hook or by crook. I usually use a man, but I think this is sad, so I keep on trying the two knife approach until he comes careening into the kitchen convinced I'm going to wind up short a hand.

2. Scoop out it's guts: remove seeds, stringy bits, and anything gooey looking from the middles of the halves - you're going to be roasting only the hard parts on its sides. Don't worry - they get nice and roasty in the oven over their long bake. For extra snacking, save the seeds and roast them simulatenously! Throw the rest of that junk out.

3. Light drizzle the exposed squash interior with olive oil or canola oil. Crack a generous amount of fresh pepper into it and season as you like - I generallys stick to salt and pepper, but part of me feels you could go nutmeggy with this baby and it would also be delish.

4. Place on a roasting pan (i.e. your most already-ruined cookie sheet...sugar leaks out of most vegetables and can leave dark burns on pans), inside-down (scooped-out side down), and bake for a good 45 minutes that way.

5. At the 45 minute mark, use tongs (or man) to flip the halves over so they are edible side upfor about 10-15 minutes, or until they are baked-looking enough for your liking. The flesh should be tender and easy to scrape with a fork. When scraped, noodly strings of squash will happen. Note: Generally, my squash comes out a little browner than in the image, which I really like.

This makes an excellent side with a dollop of sour cream or (my preference) plain yogurt. It's also commonly substituted in pasta dishes as is great with tomato sauce or with stir fried vegetables, or really with anything. Heart healthy and worth the one hard part, this is an easy and satisfying way to treat your body nice.

-A

Roasty Toasty Asparagus

Posted by amanda in asparagus, recipe, roast, side, vegetable, vegetarian

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I know what boys like, and it's certainly not long and green and it certainly doesn't make your pee smell funny. As far as they know anyways. In what looks like a life-long quest to make M get any vitamins at all, I'm learning to cook up vegetables (or sometimes not even cook! God forbid) in a way that makes them almost unrecognizable as part of the dreaded food group. Obviously, going veg meant that we were going to have the 'eat-your-vegetables' convo A-LOT. Since I started roasting though, I swear sometimes he doesn't know what hit him. Asparagus is a good place to start roasting because it's so versatile, and despite being a bit tricky to get 100% the way you want it, it makes for a pretty good side dish no matter how wet or charred it turns out. Believe me, I've tested the extremes of both of those categories only to determine that asparagus is always ALWAYS salvageable.

Preheat your oven to 450.

For the easiest roasting, just toss as much frozen chopped-in-half asparagus (arctic gardens for the win) as you like in a tablespoon- to two- of your favorite olive oil (for a really exciting evening, try a flavored one like basil or hot chilis). If you have the luxury of fresh asparagus, you might want to blanche it first, for easier (read, faster) roasting. Alternately, if you want'em really 'done', steam your asparagus over boiling water (using your steamer thingy), or cop out and boil it in a frying pan filled with 1-2 inches of water (flipping with tongs) for about 2 minutes; this will surely result in softer asparagus post-roasting, but that's certainly not always a bad thing. But be forewarned, boiling your vegetables (not to mention some of our other quick-fix vegetable habits) tends to rid them of their most nutritional qualities, so you if you've got the time, do steam them, for your own good . If you're a lemon person, toss in a squeeze to your own taste. Otherwise, minced garlic might make a nice addition. To top it off, I like a serious dose of fresh ground pepper on just about everything except ice cream. Personally, my favorite seasoning is a sea-salt/lemon-zest/dried chillies blend that I sprinkle VERY lightly over the whole shabang. Delicious, but watch that sodium boys and girls. It'll getcha.

To save your pan/cookie sheet from permanent charring, line it with foil, and spread your lightly seasoned asparagus on the pan or baking dish. Generally, try to keep them from touching each other too much (this is science that maximizes deliciousness). Roast at 450 abouts on the middle rack for 15 minutes or so. After this, I generally move my dish up to the top and broil the asparagus for another 10-15 minutes or so. That being said, times will entirely depend upon your oven and preferences, so the first time you do this, I recommend you watch with bated breath through the oven window and get a tan.

Asparagus cools down WAY too fast so you basically have to eat/serve this right away, though when I miss my window for serving it hot, it makes a fantastic addition to roasted baby potatoes and white beans in olive oil as a non-creamy pasta salad that offers up not only a veg, but a LEGUME! wild.

Now just make sure he doesn't pee in the shower. Enjoy!

-A

Image thanks to http://www.worldcommunitycookbook.org/season/guide/asparagus.html