Beetroot Two Ways
By Adriana Zanchi and Thom Eagle
An earthy and tangy dish, gorgeously pink and perfect on a piece of toast or to dip some crudités in.
Ingredients (serves 4 as a side dish)
3/4 medium sized beetroots (you can use a mix of purple and golden)
100 gr of thick full fat yogurt
Extra virgin olive oil
Salt and black pepper, to taste
1 tsp of dried mint
A few leaves of fresh mint, chopped
1 garlic clove, grated
Lemon juice, to taste
Method
Wash, peel and coarsely grate the raw beetroots and set them aside on a plate.
In a large bowl stir the yogurt and mix with a pinch of salt, black pepper, dried mint, lemon juice, a drizzle of olive oil and the grated garlic clove.
Add the grated beetroots to the bowl with the yogurt and add more yogurt if you think it’s necessary to obtain a smoother texture. Adjust salt and pepper.
Transfer to your serving dish, drizzle some more oil and sprinkle with the fresh mint leaves.
Serve with warm pitta bread.
Notes
Try to avoid using large beetroots for this dish as they will be tougher and less pleasant both to grate and eat. If you can, buy them small/medium sized.
Tips and alternatives
Swap the dairy yogurt for a plant based one if you wish, just don’t do like Adriana who accidentally bought a coconut flavoured one.
Instead of fresh mint you can use fresh dill or parsley.
Top with toasted walnuts or almonds.
2. Roasted Beetroots
We thought you might enjoy this excerpt from Thom’s newsletter
We get a weekly veg bag from the community gardens which means, at this time of the year, that we get a lot of root vegetables that need using, hopefully not just in an endless succession of soups. They grow lovely daikon which I ferment; I refuse to have anything to do with parsnips but my wife grates them into a sort of baked fritter / savoury cake thing which I have to admit is perfectly pleasant; neither of us is particularly enthusiastic about cooked beetroot, especially since it takes so long to do, and so they tend to accumulate at the bottom of the fridge. Remembering Tamar Adler’s advice in An Everlasting Meal to make it as easy as possible for yourself to cook and eat well I spend an afternoon washing them carefully and then baking them, skins on, with a splash of vinegar and water, a bay leaf, some peppercorns and coriander seeds and a clove of garlic, as tightly covered as I can manage given there is no foil in the house, for a couple of hours, until it is easy to get the blade of the little bird-beaked knife through the largest one. Then when they are cool enough to handle I rub the skins off and they are ready to cook again with potato and onion and turned into a thick soup to have with toasted cheese or blitzed into a dip with twarog and oil and I don’t know what else and in the end I wish there were more of them to dress in yoghurt and have as a salad with smoked mackerel fishcakes.
