Vinegar-Roasted Beets with Spring Onions by Alison Roman

The summer after I graduated college, I lived in a friend’s basement for a month while trying to find my own place. Kate and her husband and two children, had a local farmer’s produce subscription box that she picked up at the local farmer’s market every other Saturday morning. That box was our entertainment all week long. Kate made it an activity to find creative ways to use up all of the vegetables in the box before they went bad. Every night I came from work and she’d be chopping up a rutabaga or slicing a yellow squash for the third night that week, and we’d talk about her strategy for that night’s veggie variation. One of the most common vegetables included were beets. I knew practically nothing about them at the start, but over that  month, I helped chop, peel, roast, boil, and slice more beets than I thought possible. And I fell in love with them.

Alison has two beet recipes and both are great. The first is her Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts, which my friends still talk about as “life-changing.” The second are her vinegar-roasted beets which I think I like even more.

The first step is to roast the beets whole and unpeeled in tin foil packets, doused in white distilled vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper. Once a fork can easily pierce them, they’re ready to cool. After letting them lose their too-hot-to-handle status, it’s safe to grab a paper towel and shrug the outer skin off. The skin on my beets clung a little more tightly, so I used a paring knife to shave off the stubborn parts.

Since these beets were planned as a side dish to a larger meal that required lots of oven time, I chose to roast these first and let them cool completely while I prepared the other dishes. Alison doesn’t mention anything about serving the beets cold, but I can tell you that it worked wonderfully.

Closer to dinner time, I seared the scallions in my cast iron and mixed the yogurt and lime juice at the bottom of my serving bowl. I placed the quartered beats onto the yogurt and scattered the scallions and lots of dill over everything.

The beets were a hit! They were the only dish to be finished completely on the table. I served them with Alison’s Sour Cream Flatbreads, and most people chose to dip their breads into the yogurt mixture at the bottom of the beet bowl after the beets were all served. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to buy more beets for this coming week to repeat the dish. And that’s saying something.

217 recipes cooked, 8 to go.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Butter and Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts

“A Working Woman Makes Sides”

This is the story of a working woman who also has a slowly budding social life in a new city. Said woman has been invited with her husband to dinner at a friend's house. She was asked to bring one side dish, so naturally she opted to bring two of them. She chose Roasted Sweet Potatoes with Hot Honey Butter and Beets with Buttermilk and Walnuts by Alison Roman. 

Of course, this presents complications. With the dinner on a Friday in the city and her work out in the suburbs, she knew she’d have but 20 minutes to assemble the sides when she got home before travelling to dinner. The commute would take its toll once again. So she had to get creative. 

She chose to roast her beets in vinegar the night before. She let the little guys ooze their juices and soften while spending an hour in the oven. This, she thought, would put her in a good position for the next evening. 

The next evening arrived in the blink of an eye. Earlier that day, she asked her husband to put the sweet potatoes in the oven so they would be piping hot when she got home. He did this, kind man, but just as the working woman suspected, the oven turned into a big hot mess. This is no fault of the husband. He followed instructions to a tee. The issue stems from the woman not trusting her instincts. You see, the woman read a recipe that told her to put the sweet potatoes, poked by a fork all over, directly on the oven rack to roast. But in her heart she knew that the sugars from the potatoes would ooze out and burn, sticking to the oven with gusto. And she was right, and the oven became one hot mess, and it created many smoky problems for her the next day… but that’s another story for another time. 

The clock was now ticking to get things ready and whisked off to her friend's house. In a matter of minutes, she frantically completed the following tasks (though she’d like you to think she did this calmly and coolly with an heir of sophistication): 

• Toast walnuts on a baking sheet for ten minutes 

• Peel and slice the beets

• Measure buttermilk, yogurt and lemon juice in a bowl, stir and add salt and pepper

• Thinly slice a red onion and lightly pickle the slices in lemon juice and sumac 

• Melt butter and spices, adding vinegar and honey too

• Scrape out the meats of very hot sweet potatoes into a bowl, practically burning her fingertips in the process

• Place the beets in the bowl with buttermilk and sprinkle the onions over them

• Chop the toasted walnuts and sprinkle them over the beets too 

• Drizzle the butter mixture over the sweet potatoes and give them a good stir

• Add cumin seeds to the top of the bowl of beets and cover with saran wrap

• Cover the bowl of potatoes with foil and pack a half a lemon in a bag, along with flaky salt

• Decide she’ll worry about cleaning the oven later 

• Tell husband it’s time to go 

All these things she did in mere minutes. She feels some loss at the fact that these tasks bring her real joy and life, but she couldn’t find that joy because of the need to rush. She needed to rush because she works far away. And she wonders how to balance that work and that joy. Can the two meet, coexist? All this, she knew, would be figured out over time. For now, she chose to focus on the six friends in front of her and enjoy those slightly spicy, salty, sweet potatoes. She savored the night she had left. 

168 and 169 recipes cooked, 56 to go.

Garlicky Beet Dip with Walnuts by Alison Roman

Hot take: You have to really love beets, deep in your heart and without reservation, to also love, or even kind of like, this dip. The beet’s presence is as strong and consistent as your heart’s beat. It’s the first thing you taste, and the very last thing your mouth remembers. Yes, garlic and toasted walnuts and labne (or in my case, goat’s milk yogurt) have things to say. Their distinct flavors all have brief moments in the spotlight. But this is really a beet-centric dip, 2 cups of it to be exact. 

I made this dip, planning to take it to a friend’s home as an appetizer option. However, that friend wasn’t feeling well and cancelled an hour before we were to arrive for dinner. I was suddenly stuck with a giant bowl of this beet dip and a husband who, for lack of a better term, hates beets. He took one inquisitive bite and said, “that’s terrible.” Now to be fair, if you like beets, this dip isn’t terrible. I, for one, really enjoy roasted beets. But I have to concede that even I couldn’t have too much of this without feeling overwhelmed (beetwhelmed?). A full bite of pureed beets, even when interrupted by a cracker, is a lot to handle. 

We ended up rescheduling the dinner with friends a few nights later. The beet dip still sat largely untouched in my fridge. But sadly, I just couldn’t get myself to bring it with me. There the dip sat for about 5 days. Every time I opened the fridge door, I tried to avert my gaze as conflicting feelings of duty and aversion rose to the surface. I didn’t want to violate my standards for not wasting food. But I couldn’t get myself to eat it either. I don’t at all like to admit this, but I did end up tossing most of it in the trash. This is probably my least favorite dish so far. 

But again, if you’re an ardent beet lover, then you should give this a try. 

77 recipes cooked, 148 to go.