Monday, January 10, 2011

Beet Risotto


I love and appreciate the freezer, but I don't think we'd make it without the 'fresh' root crops from cold storage.  This is the first year we're trying to grow all our own vegetables and this past week I had a few difficult nights trying to get excited about frozen kale or butternut squash, again!  Over the weekend we made a few exciting plans for the week's meals and splurged on lots of dairy products.  Our grocery bills these days tend to center around tofu and seitan products and of course, dairy.  We bought cheddar, monterey jack, sour cream, cottage cheese, ricotta and butter.  The plans include a nice veggie lasagna and some good old Boston baked beans in our crock.  If I have a minute I'll post the crock and recipe later this week.  But, as for Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions, we did a nice broccoli raab risotto with a side of slow roasted beets.  We found that the best way to do beets is large julienne on the mandolin, a teaspoon of olive oil in a pan, cover and place on the woodstove while everything else cooks.  They seem to take only 20-25 minutes this way and cook in their own juices.  I find beets to be salty and sweet on their own, so I don't add anything else to them.  

This fall I packed the beets and carrots in wet sand but after a few weeks when the weather warmed considerably, I sorted them back out and removed the sprouts.  I wasn't sure if this was the best way to go, but I wanted to put the bigger ones on bottom and make pickled beets from the little ones.   Instead of sand I repacked with wet sawdust from our firewood pile.  I didn't have quite enough so used fresh pine shavings to finish.  After quite a bit of sharing and eating through mid-October we ended up with a tub each of beets and carrots, and only a crate of kohlrabi and cabbage.  The total canned amount of pickled beets was 25 pints. The fresh carrots are moving much more quickly than the fresh beets but we haven't yet touched our canned carrots!

 

The large golden beet was close to 2 pounds and I added a medium Detroit Red for a splash of color.  The risotto was delicious but took a LONG time since I had only brown rice.  Next time I'll check the cupboard first for short grain rice before prepping the other ingredients and getting my heart set on this meal.  



3 comments:

  1. That is one thing I don't have here at the new house - a place to store root veggies. My old house had a basement that was pretty good. This one isn't nearly as good.

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  2. Great-looking beets! I wish I could grow some! Three years of trying. They just won't do it.

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  3. We too rely on the overwintered root crops to supplement the frozen and stored food items from the garden during the winter months. I was planning to do a similar roasted root vegetable dish this coming weekend - only using carrots and parsnips. I have a bunch still in the ground in the garden and need to get busy using them as I will need the beds emptied out in another four weeks time for the earliest spring crops.

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