English Peas, Spring Onions and Roasted Almonds

Just cooked English peas, sautéd spring onions and roasted, salted almonds are a delicious combination of tender sweet, sweet pungent, and crunchy just salty. You can set this side dish next to grilled fish or chicken or mashed potatoes and a roast. It's...

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Baby Beets and Sugar Snap Peas with Orange Butter

Sweet and smooth baby beets—red, yellow, and orange—added to sugary sugar snap peas tossed with a tangy orange zest dressing and you have a seasonal salad that says Spring! You’ll have to search to find someone who doesn’t like this salad.

Baby beets and sugar snap peas are just hitting their peak in the garden. If you don’t grow these, head to the farmers’ market where they will be easy pickin’ this time of year.

We had our first supper club meeting of the season this past Saturday evening, so Becky was at the Ferry Building farmers’ market about mid-morning to pick up the beets and sugar snaps. These were fresh picked the day before.

Baby beets—about the size of a walnut—are tender, sweet, and juicy--better tasting than large ones. Choose a bunch—6 or 8 will do--all about the same size for even cooking. For this salad, the beets were individually wrapped in foil and roasted in the oven at 400ºF for about 45 minutes and then cooled in advance.

Sugar snap peas—you eat the entire pod, no shelling required—are perfect when the pods have just plumped. You’ll want to serve these within a day of harvest to enjoy the pods’ natural sweetness. About a half-pound or two cups of sugar peas will do.

Our friends Lonnie and Bruce supplied a navel orange from their backyard tree for our orange zesty dressing. You’ll only need a few slivers of zest and a tablespoon of juice, so the sections are sweet snacking while preparing the salad.

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Baby Beets: Steamed, Baked, Pickled

Baby beets are beets harvested just as they have started to round out. Leave these beets until they mature and you can call them table beets.

Baby beets—just about the size of a ping-pong ball—have the most delicate taste and texture. Table beets—as big as your fist—still taste good, but don’t let them grow much larger as their flavor will be sacrificed to size.

Choose baby beets for the crudité platter or for pickling to use as a condiment or salad addition. Opt for table beets if you plan to grate the beets for relish or to add textural interest to a salad or salsa; they’ll be easier to handle.

When it comes to color golden or yellow beets are not as sweet and mild as red beets, but they won’t bleed onto your other ingredients, your work surface or hands.

You can capture the sweetness of baby beets by steaming or baking or pickling.

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Beets

beets

Beets have a sweet, earthy taste. If you bake or roast them in their skins, you can enjoy that flavor at its most intense.

Cook beets only until they just lose their rawness then combine them with meat, fish, grains, fruits, nuts, celeriac, fennel, or bitter greens.

Once tender, beets can be sliced or diced to use in salads, risottos, and vegetable side dishes.

Serve beets warm with a dressing of butter, lemon juice, and seasoning or dress them with orange juice topped with slivers of green onion or glazed with orange marmalade.

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Beets and Beet Roots

beet greens

You should consider beets when you visit the farm market this week. Which means that you should consider beet roots if you are shopping in Europe.

The beet and the beet root are, of course, the same thing. It just happens that Europeans are a bit more accurate in their description since the (usually) red globe called a beet is the root of the plant.

Whether you call it a beet or a beet root, this is peak season: those being harvested now are likely to be just that more delicious than those that follow. Why? Because the sweet flavor of a beet’s root is affected by the speed of the plant’s growth. Beets that are allowed to mature more slowly in cooler soil and weather will be sweeter than those that rush to maturity as the summer and soil grow warmer and warmer.

What should you look for when choosing beets? The root should be smooth and firm. The leaves or tops (which can be served raw as a salad green) should look fresh. Small beets will be young and tender. Large, mature beets can be tough and have a woody texture. Whatever the size, avoid beet roots that are soft and flabby or rough and shriveled.

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