Beets!

I woke up with a hankering for beets. I'm not sure where these hankerings come from, especially when I've never really had beets. But when our pals called us for a dinner party, I nevertheless texted back, "we'll bring beets!"

So I emailed my neighbor, knowing he'd have the perfect recipe for such a thing. His response, at 3am, came as such:

• Buy beets, last time I mixed yellow and red.
• Preheat oven to say 400F
• Wash vigorously - the beets not the oven.
• Trim the greens but keep about 1" of stalk attached.
  
• Prick the beets if they are large
• Salt the beets a lot but not too much - salt to taste later
  
• Put the beets on a large piece of foil
• Coat the beets generously with oil
• Seal tightly the foil around the beets.
• Put the beats in the oven for about 30 minutes
• It's a good idea to put a cookie sheet under them to catch oil drips.
  
• Open the foil and continue to cook until you can pierce easily with a fork but not until they are mushy.
  
• Cool the beets overnight - I just leave them in the oven - don't spill the juice!!!
  
• Peel/Skin the beets with a veggie peeler if the skin is tough
  
• Slice the beets
• Add feta first then salt to taste. Add black pepper.
  

So we set to work, scrubbing, salting, roasting, leaving, shaving, slicing, rosemarying, reroasting, and finally, fetaing. Oh boy. Amazing.


They were the perfect texture of soft, yet toothsome, chewy, yet not underdone. Although not akin to the texture of the seemingly perfect gnocchi, it was equally perfect.

I feared our dinner friends wouldn't enjoy them, knowing full well that not everyone shares my passion for all things garden, but they tore into them; only a few small rounds were left after dinner. But I should have known better; these were the exact crew that introduced me to Brussels sprouts and initiated the quest for BS that reigned my fall of '07.