Chilled Beet Soup from Le French Oven

My buddies and I over at Virtual Potluck loved the cookbook Le French Oven so much, we decided to do a group post about it. AND we've got cookbooks to give to you. AND something else.

Do you know what a French oven is? You might have one, and not even know it.

According to some definitions, Dutch ovens are made from uncoated cast iron, but similar coated pots are French ovens. There are of course, French French ovens - coated cast iron pots made in France.

The book Le French Oven focuses on cooking in different types of French ovens, from large ones to individual ones. I have at least a dozen pages bookmarked, with recipes I want to try. And I've made a few.

But for this post, I decided to make beet soup. Because I love soup and I love beets, and this recipe is completely different from my usual.

I usually make beet soup similar to what my mom made - a clear soup that's a teeny bit tart. Then sour cream is added at the table. Mom's beet soup could be served hot, warm, cool, or chilled. And I pretty much liked it every possible way.

This soup is designed to be served chilled, and it's blended with buttermilk. A lot of buttermilk. The result it a very pretty pink soup.

I had to make one little change to the recipe. It called for using beet greens as a garnish. The beets I bought at the farmers market were end-of-season beets, and the greens were really beat up. They weren't really appetizing either as garnish or in the soup. So, while I made the rest of the recipe according to the book's instructions, I made a different garnish.

While I didn't make the garnish this time, I do like the idea of floating a "salad" on top of the soup. I might give it a try next time I have pretty beet greens.

If you have pretty greens, this includes those instructions, but I'll include my variation as well. Just in case.

Gorgeous Chilled Beet Soup
with Beet Greens Salad
Adapted from Le French Oven by Hillary Davis

8 beets, with good looking leaves
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
2 quarts buttermilk
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 teaspoons salt, divided
2 cracks freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon white or wine vinegar

Wash, trim, and peel the beets - wear rubber gloves if you don't want to stain your hands!

Place parchment or wax paper on your cutting board if you don't want to stain it. Coarsely shred 2 beets and set aside. Slice the remaining beets into large pieces.

Pull the leafy part of the leaves off of the thick stems and discard the stems. Finely chiffonade the greens so you have a tightly packed 1/2 cup. Use any remaining greens for whatever you like.

Place the sliced beets in the French oven with enough water to cover. Add the lemon juice and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook the beets until they are tender - about 40-60 minutes. Drain the beets.

When the beets are cool enough to handle, put them in a food processor or blender, in batches if necessary, with the buttermilk, sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt, and pepper. Blend until very smooth. Pour the finished puree back into the French oven.

Taste for seasoning and add more salt and/or pepper, if desired. Cover the French oven and refrigerate until the soup is chilled.

Just before you're ready to serve, whisk together the oil, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and vinegar. Toss in the grated beets and the beet greens. Mix well to coat.

Serve the soup in bowls and top with the beet salad.

Note: Since my beet greens weren't edible, I garnished with peeled and julienned cucumber pieces instead.

All of the participating members of Virtual Potluck received a copy of the book from the publisher as well as a serving item from Le Creuset; I got the soup tureen shown in the photos. The publisher is providing books for the winners as well as an oval Dutch oven for one winner.

Giveaway is over.

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Tarted Up Spinach and Beet Greens

Not too long ago, I did a sponsored post for Cut 'n Clean Greens, which fulfilled my obligation to them. It didn't however, take care of the vast amount of greens they sent me. I'm beginning to turn a little bit green here.

But it's oh-so-healthy, right?

I grabbed a container that was labeled spinach and beet green salad, but I wasn't planning on using it as salad. I love spinach - but mostly I love it cooked. Much of the time, it's just spinach and lemon, but another one of my favorites is spinach with hot bacon dressing.

That recipe dates back to when my mom used to gather dandelion greens in the early spring, and she'd make hot bacon dressing. Since the dandelions needed to be picked before they flowered, we usually only had them once a year. And that's about the only time we had the hot bacon dressing.

Once in a while, though, we'd have spinach with hot bacon dressing. While I don't go picking dandelions in the spring like my mom did, I make spinach salad once in a while.

This is similar to that salad, but instead of bacon, I used butter for the richness. And, well, to cook the onions. The flavor in his dish is cleaner and crisper because it doesn't have the smoke flavor from the bacon.

The wine vinegar gives it a nice sharpness, and the sugar counters it with a little bit of sweet. If you want to veer into sweet-sour flavor, you can add more sugar.

It also has interesting color from the beet greens,which turned the onions a pretty pink. It's not just a bowl of green.

While the original dish was called a salad, it was really more of a side dish. You'd serve it with a meal, and not ahead of it.

Tarted Up Spinach and Beet Greens

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Several grinds black pepper
Pinch of sugar
2 tablespoons wine vinegar
1 onion, diced
1/2 teaspoons salt
1 8-ounce package Cut 'n Clean Greens spinach and beet green salad

Melt the butter on medium heat in a saute pan. Add the onion and salt. Cook, stirring, until the onions soften.

Add the greens, pepper, sugar, and wine vinegar.

Cook, turning the greens with tongs, until they wilt evenly. Taste and add more salt, sugar, or pepper, if desired.

This is done as soon as the greens are wilted, but if you prefer, you can continue cooking until the greens soften even more - it's up to you.

Serve hot.

I received the greens from Cut 'n Clean Greens at no cost to me for use in a previous post. I was not expected or required to write about them again.

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Cheese Fest - the recap - AND recipes from Hosea Rosenberg

I mentioned that I was going to a cheese fest here in Colorado, and said I'd give a recap.

So here it is: I ate waaaaay too much cheese. Is that even possible? Yes, maybe. Although I nibbled some cheese curds at dinner, so I guess I recovered quickly.

There was a huge room full of cheese companies at the fest, with a lot of cheese samples. Some of the vendors were selling cheeses at the fest, others were just displaying. And there were a few related companies, as well.

Mostly cheese, though.

There was a pretty big crowd, and it was orderly, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It seems that even when lines aren't required, people get in lines and follow along. So there was a bit of waiting to get to the cheese samples and the cheese people.

But here's the deal. And this is something I thought about after the event. Some people paid their money and simply wanted to sample the cheeses. Munch-munch-munch. And maybe find some new cheeses they might buy - now or later.

Other people wanted to chat with the cheese people, ask questions about where the cheese was made, how it was made, what sort of milk, how long it was aged. Which is great. But every time a chatty person asked a cheese question, it meant that other people waiting behind them in the line had to wait for the questions to be asked before they could grab their little sample of cheese and move along. It would be rude to bypass a chatter to grab a sample, so people patiently waited in line.

And for the most part, the lines moved quickly enough. But some folks were confused about where lines started and where you were supposed to go at turning points. It was actually announced that there were no actual lines, but still people waited behind whoever was in front of them. Because it would have seemed rude to crash ahead to grab a sample of cheese when someone else was talking, right?

Maybe. I don't know.

Would there be a more efficient way to do this? Maybe a buffet of cheese samples, and a separate section where people could chat with the cheese vendors? Possibly samples there as well, but funnel eaters to the right and chatters to the left? It would mean that the cheese vendors would have to watch their sample supply in one place and chat in another, but many of the vendors had 2 or more people in their booths, anyway. One person could check the cheese supply every half hour, and spend the rest of the time chatting. Or let a volunteer refill all the cheese samples. Or something.

Anyway, that's not a criticism of the event or the venue. This is the same thing that happens at every event like this I attend. It was just something I thought of after I got home.

But I digress. Let's talk cheese.

There was a lot of it. You can see the vendor list in my previous post. I sampled some cheeses I'd never heard of before, a lot of cheeses in the cheddar family, a range of very young to pretty aged varieties. Some were smoked or had herbs or peppers for flavoring. One had green and black olives. I wish I could tell you whose cheese that was, but at this point it's a blur. Or maybe a cheese coma.

There were also cheeses from companies I'm very familiar with that I didn't sample, because I wanted to try as many new ones as possible. And some goats in the parking lot. Yes, goats. Awwww. Goats.

And then there were the speakers.

Best, for me, was Hosea Rosenberg who prepared three quick recipes while he took questions from the audience. A lot of what he talked about was about his experiences on Top Chef, but he also talked about life before and after the show.

And of course he talked about food.

Back when Rosenberg was on the show, he was chef at Jax Fish House. Now, he's got his own catering company in Boulder, Blackbelly Catering. And he seems like he's having a heck of a lot of fun.

Getting Thirsty?

There were small cash bars scattered around for those who wanted to indulge, and one of the speakers at the event talked about beer and cheese pairings. That talk included a chance to sample 7 cheeses along with three beers, a gin, and a coffee liqueur.

The coffee liqueur, made by Spirit Hound Distillers was pretty awesome. I mean, I've made my own coffee liqueur, but I'd buy this stuff. I'm not a huge fan of the commercial gins - too much Christmas tree flavor for me - but I liked the Spirit Hound gin a lot.

I didn't sample the beers - it was early afternoon and the gin had gone straight to my braincase and I was overstuffed with cheese. So I headed home. Mission accomplished.

Would I go back next year? Yep, sure I would. And I'd go hungry.

Want Recipes? I've got 'em!

Chef Hosea Rosenberg kindly offered to let me post his recipes here, which is pretty awesome.

The grape truffles were really interesting - it's simple in terms of ingredients, but the flavors mingled in ways you might not expect. He said the key is to get a super-thin layer of the goat cheese because the flavor of goat cheese is so strong, it could easily overpower everything else.

I wish I had a photo of the finished product, but I didn't take one. But the goat cheese was indeed a tiny layer. Like, the thickness of ... uh... really thin. As thin as you can get it.

Grape, Pistachio  Goat Cheese “Truffles” 
Recipe courtesy of Hosea Rosenberg from Blackbelly Catering. 
Used with permission; all rights reserved.
serves 4-8

40 fresh, juicy green & red grapes
8 ounces plain goat cheese
8 ounces shelled pistachios, toasted
grey sea salt
truffle oil

1.  Pick grapes, wash gently in cold water and dry on paper towels.
2.  Roll a very small ball of goat cheese in your hands (roughly half the size of a grape) and flatten in the palm of one hand with your thumb.
3.  Place one grape in center of goat cheese and gently work cheese around until grape is entirely covered.  Chill.
4.  Crush toasted pistachios in food processor until very fine.  Place in bowl.
5.  Roll goat cheese grapes in pistachios, gently pressing, until covered in nuts.  Chill.
6.  To serve, slice grapes in half and set on platter with cut side facing up.  Garnish each cut grape with a couple grains of salt and one drop of truffle salt.  Serve immediately.

Beets me

Next up, we have a beet "tartare." But before you start questioning the idea of raw beets, that's not what's going on here. Hosea called it a tartare because it looks like one. The beets are fully cooked.

Beet “Tartare”
Recipe courtesy of Hosea Rosenberg from Blackbelly Catering. 
Used with permission; all rights reserved.
serves 10

2 pounds large red beets
2 Tbsp mayonnaise
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp lemon zest
2 tsp  fresh parsley, chopped
2 tsp  shallots, chopped fine
2 Tbsp capers, chopped
hot sauce, to taste (optional)
kosher salt
fresh cracked black pepper

Boil beets in water until cooked through, but still al dente.  Remove from water and chill in ice water until cold.  Peel and dice very small.  Combine with remaining ingredients and season with salt, pepper, and hot sauce if desired.

Serve on crackers with shaved hard cheese (queso de mano from Haystack is our recommended choice).

Grilled and Cheesy

The last recipe is a grilled cheese. Yeah, I know. We all know how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Even our moms knew how to make them. But this one's got a twist, with apples two ways in the sandwich.

And some spices you might not think of.

As far as the cheese, since Hosea is a local, he chose a local cheese. You can find more info on Haystack Mountain's cheeses here.

Haystack Camembert Grilled Cheese with Apple

Recipe courtesy of Hosea Rosenberg from Blackbelly Catering. 
Used with permission; all rights reserved.

serves one!

bread of choice

Haystack Mountain camembert cheese, sliced

honeycrips apple, sliced

butter

apple jam (recipe below)

Spread butter on one side of two slices of bread and place in hot pan.  Spread jam on one side, top with cheese and apple.  Place other slice of bread on top and press with spatula.  Flip occasionally until both slices are golden brown and cheese is melted.

apple jam:

2 honeycrips apples diced very small

2 Tbps sugar

1 tsp dry mustard seeds

2 C apple cider vinegar

1 cinnamon stick

1 star anise pod

Combine all ingredients in pot and bring to boil.  Turn heat to low and simmer until thick and jammy. Remove star anise and cinnamon stick. Cool and keep in refrigerator until ready to use.

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Quinoa Beet Salad and a Q&A with cookbook author Marika Blossfeldt

Marika Blossfeldt is the author of Essential Nourishment. Not only is she sharing her insights about the book - AND a recipe - but there's also a giveaway of three copies the book!

Q. What prompted you to write your first cookbook?

A. In 1995 I was very lucky to find a dilapidated, yet beautiful old farm called Polli Talu (meaning Polli’s farm) in my native country Estonia. It had always been my dream to live in the countryside, and buying this farm was a first step to living my dream.

Now, what would a dancer, choreographer, now yoga teacher do in the countryside? Well, I envisioned restoring the farm and transforming it into an international center for the visual, performing and healing arts. That took several summers of hard work – but in 1999 we opened the doors to the dance studio and began with our first events: a Reiki seminar, a yoga intensive and our first guest artist arrived to take up residency.
With the years we added an art studio, housed in the former stable and a writer’s studio, housed in the sauna building.

Now approaching its 15th season, summers are packed with inspiring workshops, rejuvenating retreats and lovely guests. Being in a rural area of Estonia, I was faced with the necessity of feeding my guests. First I simply followed my gut feeling (no pun intended), which is not such a bad thing at all, as it turns out with scientific research to back it: we actually have a second brain in the belly.

Intuitively I felt inspired to feed my guests simple wholesome meals made from natural ingredients. I remember thinking, if I make porridge for breakfast – at least they will get one serving of whole grains per day. And that seemed reassuring at the time. And, by the way, it is still our traditional breakfast fare at the farm.

Our guests really enjoyed the food I made and frequently asked me: so when are you going to write a cookbook? I put it off for many years, as I thought: surely this means a lot of work and will be very costly on top of it – which, as a self-published author now speaking from experience, really is true.

Comes 2004 and I decide that maybe it’s time to get some nutritional education, so that I’d be equipped to feed my guests balanced and nutrient-dense delicious meals. In my winter home, then NYC, a catalogue from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition arrives in my mailbox; I take one look and know, this is the school I want to go to.

Fast forward to 2007 - I have since graduated and become a health coach – back at the farm I am sitting around the dining table with the women in my week-long Passion, Purpose and Pleasure Wellness Retreat and the question comes up again: so when will you write your cookbook? My niece Ave is one of the participants and she looks at me and says: let’s do it and I look at her and say – OK – let’s do it! And thus she became the producer for the book and I the writer and artistic director.

Q What kind of a cookbook is it?

A Essential Nourishment is a beautifully designed cookbook and nutrition guide fusing an appreciation for the sensual pleasures of natural food with a common-sense approach to nourishment.

Each whole food recipe is easy to recreate and accompanied by a sensuous full-page photograph - taken at Polli's farm, an exquisitely serene environment. What I am trying to do, is seduce my readers to eat healthy.

Potentially life changing, Essential Nourishment is an inspiring, concise and very practical holistic lifestyle companion, weaving together food, art and the joy of living a healthy and fulfilling life with gentle, easy to implement suggestions for balanced eating, abundant energy and genuine well-being.

In Essential Nourishment, I share tips for eating well naturally without sacrificing taste and pleasure. My book makes it easy to:

• eat more foods that come straight from Mother Earth
• find and choose locally grown and raised food · cook meals at home with ease
• reduce your intake of factory-made, processed food
• learn to savor naturally sweet foods
• cut back on refined sugar and flour without giving up flavor
• incorporate healthful oils and fats into your diet
• avoid refined and hydrogenated oils
• enjoy plenty of pure water

By following my gentle guidelines, you will notice your body humming with joy and good vibrations.

Q Would you like to share a story from the making of your book?

A I love telling the story behind the cover image for the book. You know how sometimes (really most times) you have a very clear vision of what you would like something to look like and when you get around to making it, be it a painting or a photo, it looks so different from the image in your head? Not so with the cover shot.

From the time when I first started working on my farm, I remember taking out the old dining table and kitchen chairs to be able to enjoy a meal outside in the summer time – one of my favorite things to do – especially since I grew up in an apartment building without a garden. Everything tastes so much better in fresh air! It struck me how different a real table with chairs looked in the grass as opposed to the look of garden furniture. Something about that I just totally loved.

So when the time came to conjure up an enchanting cover shot, I remembered that image and envisioned a table setting in the middle of a wild meadow with tall grasses and dandelions. The table was set for a small dinner party with wine glasses and a vase filled with flowers. Since my book is all about natural foods, as close to Mother Nature as possible, I wanted to arrange whole uncooked foods on the table.

I imagined myself standing behind the table ready to greet my guests. I wanted the horizon to be above my head, so that I would be totally immersed in the green meadow. We found the perfect spot; we knew that the light would be best in the evening, when the sun would be golden and shining from just the right direction. We set everything up – careful not to disturb the dandelions that where past bloom and had turned into fluffy white balls of delicate tiny seed parachutes. Then I came on the stage.

What I did not expect where the thousands of mosquitoes that immediately attacked me. It was so bad that I could not think straight anymore. I did my best to look relaxed and happy, but truly, it was torture. I couldn’t wait for the shoot to be over, hoping that there would be at least one photo where my face doesn’t look like I am going mad.

And then the amazing thing happened. Out of the blue my cat came and decided to join us in the meadow. She went for the chair on the left, hopped on it and sat, dreamily looking into the distance. We took one more shot and that was the perfect picture. When I looked at it later on the computer screen I couldn’t believe my eyes. The photo was exactly how I had imagined, the feeling, the light, the composition and the icing on the cake was my beautiful kitty, perfectly poised, sweet and serene.

Q Would you like to share a recipe from your book?

A I would love to. There is one recipe that has become my signature recipe. It is a quinoa beet salad, easy to make, refreshingly delicious, looks gorgeous thanks to the intense color of the beets and can be enjoyed by vegans and gluten and lactose intolerant persons as well.

Quinoa Beet Salad
serves 6

Salad:
2 medium beets, tops removed, whole
2 cups (480 ml) water
1 cup (240 ml) quinoa, rinsed
2 pinches salt
1 bulb fennel, cut into small cubes
1 bunch scallions, chopped
1 handful chopped basil plus a few leaves

Dressing:
juice of 1 to 2 lemons
4 to 6 tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper

Place the whole, unpeeled beets into a pot, add water to cover and boil until soft, about 40 to 60 minutes.

In a separate pot, bring the 2 cups (480 ml) of water to a boil and add the quinoa and salt. Bring to a second boil, then reduce the heat to its lowest setting and simmer, covered and untouched, for 15 minutes or until all the water is absorbed. Spread the cooked quinoa on a large plate to cool.

When the beets are soft, douse them in cold water until cool, then peel and cut them into small cubes.

Combine the cooked quinoa and beets in a bowl and add the fennel, scallions and chopped basil.

Combine the dressing ingredients in a glass jar. There should be about twice as much lemon juice as oil. Close the lid and shake to mix.

Pour the dressing over the salad and mix well. Let the salad marinate for at least ½ hour.

Just before serving, toss gently and adjust lemon juice and seasoning if necessary.

Garnish with basil leaves and serve with a green salad.

The Essential Nourishment GIVEAWAY

Three lucky participants will win a copy of ESSENTIAL NOURISHMENT.

We’ll mail your book for free to anywhere in the world.

To win a copy of Essential Nourishment, simply follow these 3 easy steps:

1. Go to the book’s FB page www.facebook.com/EssentialNourishment and click “Like” 
2. Find the GIVE AWAY post and click “Share” 
3. Share it on your wall.

Hurry – offer ends January 20, 2013

Want to know more about the book?

Check out the book trailer on YouTube.

Essential Nourishment is on Facebook
Polli Talu is on Facebook
Marika is on Twitter

You can find Marika on her website
The Polli Talu has a blog

You can purchase Essential Nourishment at:
Marika's site
Amazon

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Easy Beet Soup (Borscht)

Borscht was one of my mother's soups. Like any frugal housewife, she made plenty of soups that were all about using up leftovers and squeezing the last bits of flavor from bones, and getting rid of wilted vegetables. Those were good soups, but they were different every time.

On the other hand, there were a few soups that she specifically set out to make, and those tended to be a bit more consistent. Beet soup - borscht, was one of those soups.

The funny thing about borscht in our house was that we were sort of like the three bears. My dad liked his borscht steaming hot, my mother liked hers chilled, and I liked it best when it was right in the middle - not hot, but not cold, either.

But no matter if we ate it hot, cold, or in-between, we always had is served with sour cream and diced cucumbers. When stirred into the soup, the cream turned the soup a pretty pink color, and the cucumbers added a nice crunch. Now, when I make beet soup, I serve similar sides. But to be honest, sometimes the sour cream is actually home made Greek-style yogurt.

I never got my mother's recipe for beet soup, but I know what it tasted like. It was always pretty tart, and she used either white vinegar or her secret ingredient - sour salt - to add the tartness. Beets were coarsely grated for finely julienned and added to the soup. And if she was working with fresh beets with nice leaves, the stems and leaves also went into the soup.

The beets I had didn't have good leaves, so I skipped that. I had some beets that were already cooked and peeled, and I didn't think ahead about using the cooking liquid, so that was out. And then I cheated a bit with the flavoring. Or, really more than a bit. I found this in a Polish grocery store:

How could I NOT add this to my soup?

I grated about four of my cooked beets into a saucepan, added water until it the water/beet ratio was where I wanted it to be, added a spoonful of the instant borscht, and tasted it. It needed salt and vinegar, and I added a bit more of the instant borscht. Let it simmer for while so the flavors could mingle, and that was it. Done.

Served with a bowl of my home made Greek-style yogurt and a bowl of cucumbers, for garnishing.

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