Beet greens are a new, delightful discovery to me. For the longest time, I carried a grudge against beets for the appalling way they treated my childhood taste buds. My conclusion, at age 8, was only the only one logical, or even thinkable: like Romeo from Verona, the vegetable must be banished. Of course, my mother wished that I could think in terms of the Bard at that tender age, but I was probably too focused on drawing spaceships destroying each other with intricate multi-colored laser beams.
Lisl has brought many new things into my life which I find surprisingly enjoyable, like children (well, maybe the jury should be out on that one), washing up as I cook, pavlova (more on that below), and beets. Roasted beets with goat cheese, walnuts, and arugula. That’s so good, it doesn’t need to be a grammatically proper sentence. However I digress from the initial impetus of this post, which was me using more of the greens from the vegetables I purchase. Who knew that you could eat beet, turnip, radish, dandelion, etc etc greens? (Answer: many of you, but not me until last year!)
I purchased some beets with the greens still attached and fresh. I also found these baby turnips with their greens at the Kingston, NY farmers market (now open). When Lisl and I had dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns the other weekend (wonderful experience), one of my favorite elements was the simplest: raw baby turnips with a subtle dressing. And that is exactly how I ate the beauties in the above picture. But rather than throw out the greens, which I might have done in an earlier, more ignorant phase, I sauted them with the beet greens in this fairly classic combination:
Continue reading “Sauted Beet and Turnip Greens with Bacon and Legumes; misc food notes”
