Wednesday, October 5, 2022

October 6, 2022 - This Week's Box Contents Featuring Beets

 


Cooking With This Week's Box

Red, Gold or Chioggia Beets:
Spicy Beet Salad with Tahini (See below)
Photo from thekitchn.com
Spicy Shredded Beet Salad (See below)

Leeks:  

Orange Carrots:  

Adirondack Red Potatoes:  

Red or Orange Italian Frying Peppers:  

Mini Sweet Peppers:  

White, Purple or Yellow Cauliflower or Broccoli Romanesco, or Broccoli:  

Jalapeño Peppers:  

Garlic:  

Yellow Onions:  

Salad Mix:  

Baby Spinach:  

Butterscotch Butternut Squash:  

Dill:

Eggplant: 

Baby White Turnips:

Hello Everyone!  

The bounty of our fall harvests is evident in this week’s full box! We are nearing the end of the season for both peppers and eggplant, although we do have a cover over our mini sweet peppers for frost protection. Hopefully, we’ll be able to continue picking mini sweet peppers, but at this time of year you never know how much more you may be able to harvest.   In the midst of cleaning up fields from our summer crops, we are also deep into fall root crop harvests!  This week we’re harvesting bulk beets and sunchokes.  All of our carrots and celeriac are now in storage and it’s a tight squeeze to get in and out of our coolers!  We also harvested bulk beets earlier this week, and this is the vegetable we are featuring. 

Beets are a versatile vegetable and may be used in many ways. This week I’m sharing two salad options with you.  The two recipes include Spicy Beet Salad with Tahini (See below) and Spicy Shredded Beet Salad (See below). Both of these recipes are pretty simple, but great ways to utilize vegetables in this week’s box!  

This is our final week for leeks, so I included two new recipes for 30 Minute Creamy Mushroom and Leek Chicken Breasts and Cheesy Leek and Broccoli Pasta Bake.  These are family friendly recipes that are pretty easy to execute.  Either of these would go well with Pull-Apart Cheesy Onion Bread!

Speaking of lasts, this is the final eggplant delivery of the season. Throughout the list of suggestions you’ll find several different recipes for using eggplant along with other fall ingredients.  Perhaps you’d like to try this Eggplant and Potato Curry or this Roasted Eggplant and Pepper Salad. I want to try this recipe for Crispy Baked Eggplant with Lime Dill Yogurt.

Hopefully, you’ll find a cooking inspiration or two in this week’s list of suggestions!  You may be wondering where the sweet potatoes are this week? Well, we decided to let them “cure” a little longer before we start washing them. We plan to include them in next week’s box!

Have a good week!
Andrea 
 

Vegetable Feature: Beets

by Andrea Yoder

I realize this is not the first time you’ve received beets in your box this year, but with the shifting of seasons I thought it might be helpful to take pause and put our focus on the humble beet.  Beets are typically available starting in mid to late June. Early in the season we choose beet varieties that are best for fresh harvest with their green tops still attached. As we move through the season, we shift our choice in varieties to those that have the longest storage potential. As we enter fall and winter, beets become an important part of our winter storage vegetable line up. They store particularly well, and we can eat them well into the new year!  We grow three different colors of beets including the traditional red beet as well as golden and Chioggia beets which have a bright pink skin and are candy-striped inside!  A common question many ask is “What is the difference between the different colors of beets?”  In general, all of our beets, regardless of color, are sweet and earthy.  Red beets have more of the traditional earthy beet flavor. Chioggia and golden beets are generally more mild in flavor, but typically are as sweet or sweeter than the red beets.  Individuals who don’t care for beets generally like and will eat golden beets, which is a good place to start for those who are still learning to like them.

Beets, also referred to as beetroot, may be eaten raw or cooked. Thinly sliced or grated beets are a nice addition to salads and slaws. As for cooking, beets are generally either boiled or steamed on the stove top or roasted in the oven. The cooking time will vary depending upon the size of the beet. The general recommendation is to cook beets with their skins on and the root tail intact. For red beets in particular this minimizes the leaching of the water-soluble color compounds from the beet.  Once the beets are cooked, the peel should be easy to remove. You know a beet is fully cooked when the beet easily slides off a skewer, fork or cake tester stuck into the middle of the beet.

Red beets do contain a water-soluble nutrient called anthocyanin. This compound is responsible for giving red beets their color, which will stain your hands (temporarily) and the color will bleed onto other ingredients if you’re using them in a salad, soup, or otherwise.  Golden beets and Chioggia beets don’t lose their color or bleed color onto other ingredients. 

Beets are very versatile and pair well with many other ingredients including vegetables such as fennel, celery, carrots, red onions, shallots, garlic, arugula, kale, winter squash, and other salad greens along with other root vegetables. They also go well with fruits including apples, oranges, lemons, pears, avocadoes, and pomegranates. Additionally, beets pair nicely with goat cheese, feta cheese, blue cheese, butter, nuts, sunflower seeds, and pumpkin seeds as well as chocolate!

Beets are packed with fiber, calcium, iron and vitamins A, C, and K to name a few. The greens have a higher content of iron compared to spinach. In natural healing circles, beets are known for their ability to purify the blood and the liver. Their iron content, though not terribly high, is of the highest and finest quality making it an excellent blood building food. These colorful root vegetables also contain powerful nutrient compounds that help protect against heart disease, birth defects and certain cancers, especially colon cancer.

Spicy Shredded Beet Salad 

Yield:  4 servings
3 cups shredded carrots
5 small steamed beets, julienned
½ cup thinly sliced red onion
1 jalapeño, de-seeded and deveined, thinly sliced
½ cup cilantro, chopped
¼ tsp salt
⅛ tsp black pepper
1 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
¼- ½ tsp honey
  1. In a large bowl, toss together carrots, beets, red onion, jalapeño and cilantro.  Season with salt and pepper.  
  2. In a small bowl, combine olive oil, apple cider vinegar and honey.
  3. Toss salad in dressing.  Serve cold.
Recipe sourced from www.chelseyamernutrition.com



Spicy Beet Salad with Tahini 

Photo from jewishunpacked.com
Yield:  4-6 servings 

6 medium beets
3 Tbsp apple cider vinegar or juice of 1 lemon
4 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and black pepper, to taste
½ tsp sugar
1 tsp ground cumin
¼ cup thinly sliced red onion
½ cup ready-to-eat tahini
¼ cup chopped fresh parsley
  1. Scrub the beets well and trim off any roots.  Place them in a large pan, and cover with plenty of cold water.
  2. Bring the beets to a boil, and cook at a medium temperature, covered, for 45 minutes or until a knife slide easily into the flesh of the largest beet.
  3. Drain the beets.  Peel them as soon as they’re cool enough to handle—the peel will slide off between your fingers.  Chop the beets into coarse dice.  Place in a medium-sized bowl.
  4. In a separate small bowl, blend the vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper, sugar, and cumin.  Pour over the beets, preferably while they’re still warm.  Stir the onions into the salad.
  5. Taste to adjust seasonings if desired.  Cover the bowl and refrigerate the salad for at least an hour.  When ready to serve, spoon the salad out onto a dish and spoon tahini over it.  Garnish with parsley and enjoy.
Recipe sourced from www.jewishunpacked.com
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