Haakon made this really delicious salad.
The best part was the overabundance of beet juice left over.
Utilizing the power of SCIENCE aka baking soda to mess with the ph, I was later able to use this to color the frosting on my gingerbread cookies with a orange coffee glaze.
Pickled beet salad with curly endive
Pickled beets
3 lb beets
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup light brown sugar
1 tsp caraway
a few cloves and allspices
Wrap the beets in foil and bake for 1 1/2 hours. When they
are cool, peel and cut into 3/4" cubes, and pickle in 1 part sugar to 2
parts vinegar. (I used the end of 3 bottles of vinegar, apple cider, rice, and
white wine) Add the spices to the sugar and vinegar, bring to a boil and cook
over a low heat for about 10 minutes, let cool a little and pour over the
beets. I let this sit for a day, but longer would be even better.
Dressing
1/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup olive oil
2 tsp grainy mustard
3 large cloves garlic
salt and pepper
1/4 lb blue cheese, crumbled
Dissolve the mustard in the lemon juice, and mix with other
ingredients. Have a light hand when stirring so the blue cheese doesn't clump
together again.
Green salad
a small head of curly endive
a bunch of scallions
small bunch flat parsley
Wash and trim all the greens Slice endive in 3/4 inch
slices. Chop parsley coarsely. Slice scallions in 1/4 inch slices. Mix together.
Combining
1/3 cup pecans
just before serving, pour and spoon half the dressing onto
the greens, and toss. Sprinkle with 1/6 cup pecans. Remove the beets from their pickling juice and arrange on
top. Pour remaining dressing over
and top with remaining pecans.
Notes:
This started out as a traditional beet salad, maybe from
Fannie Farmer, with pickled beets on a green salad, updated towards the typical
modern beet salad
The roasting gives a slightly smoky flavor, but I'm not sure
that much is left after pickling. Probably boiling would be almost as good.
Most similar recipes call for arugula. I love arugula, but the arugula was
expensive and not that good, so I decided to try the endive instead, which also
has a nice bitter flavor. Watercress, dandelion greens, regular endive,
radicchio, or escarole should also work.
You can also cut the beets in 1/4 to 1/3 inch slices (maybe
cutting them in halves or quarters if they are large), and pickle them with similar
slices of onions. In this case, omit the scallions.