At two o’clock this afternoon I thought I had a spectacular, mid-winter Russian –inspired dinner all planned out: baked beets with pistachio butter, kasha (a type of buckwheat) with shiitake mushrooms, and hard-boiled eggs. The thought of the bright green sauce set against those deep purple beets sent my salivary glands in overdrive. Bittman kept referring to the flavors as “earthy” and “complex” – my umami taste receptors were tingling. (Umami is that sixth taste recently “discovered” by the West – its not sweet, not salty, its kind of savory; think soy sauce). What was I thinking?!
When shopping in the produce section I can find onions, I can find carrots but beets? Where in the world are the beets? Oh in that formidable wall of green leafiness one generally avoids, tucked away with the rutabagas and turnips – which are all about as distinguishable as the various igneous rocks in eighth grade science class. After making an educated guess about their appearance, I grabbed two bushels that loomed larger than my toddler with whom they shared a shopping cart seat.
As you can see from the picture, beets are ridiculously messy. After baking them in the oven you’re suppose to “slip” the skins off – oh really Bittman, that easy? I would gouge out a chunk of beet flesh just to peel off a fingernail-size piece of skin – and repeat for the next 30 minutes. I finally perfected my technique on the sixth, and last, beet. Baking the beets concentrates their super high sugar content, so by the end of the peeling everything in the kitchen is sticky and pink – like what your hands feel like after eating cotton candy.
Meanwhile, the pistachios are sauteing in some grapeseed oil on the stove. As I stared off into space congratulating myself for making my OWN nut butter, absent-mindedly stirring the nuts around, a strange singeing smell broke my trance. AH! The pistachios! They’re blackened and burnt! Well that’ll add more complexity right? I tossed the nuts with more oil in the food processor, hoping – Erik walked in, took one look at the brown, grainy liquid and said ,“Who wants poo??”
A red-flag should have gone up when the kasha recipe said to stir an egg into the grain before adding broth. Instead I thought “oh, how exotic!” The dry kasha had an intense woodsy smell – my brain didn’t know what to do with this information, like it had no receptor for east European wood smell. As it cooked for half an hour a sickening twist in my stomach grew. The woodsy, nutty scent gave way to a smell I can only describe as revolting. When I traveled in Russia six years ago, I can remember feeling totally disorientated the whole time. The language, the attitudes, the food were all completely outside of my realm of understanding. I had no compass for navigating the overwhelming novelty of it all. I bet unknowingly eating kasha at some point just confused me further.
Well, the beets tasted like if you had just finished your spring planting and licked your fingers. The pistachio butter was burnt paste. And the smell of the kasha had dug itself in my brain so I couldn’t think of anything else besides its nauseating scent. Thank goodness for the hard-boiled eggs – Anneliese ate most of them.
Lesson learned? Do NOT try more than one new flavor at a time – otherwise you’ll end up with a beet-stained kitchen bursting with dirty dishes and an empty tummy.
Thank goodness our local mini-mart who just received a shipment of “Amy’s Frozen Vegetarian Entrees”.
And here are some pretty pictures from our much more successful breakfast and lunch; steel-cut oatmeal with walnuts and cinnamon and then pasta with olive oil, feta, edamame, and cherry tomatoes. Anneliese woke me up by whispering “aaaah-meal” “aaah-meal” in my ear.
I need to share a culinary trick. Have you seen plastic, hollow produce- shaped food savers popping up in stores lately? They're $4 - I went for the onion saver. I was at my wits end throwing out days old, half-cut shriveled onions. And good news, the saver works! This onion was able to contribute to several dinners. Good onion. Go get one!
