An Appetizing Start – and the Beet Goes On...

What’s cooking? Golden Beet Soup and Cucumbers in Pesto

Let’s get a bit on nomenclature out of the way first. Who here knows the difference between an appetizer and an hors d’oeuvre? It’s a trick question, because there is no difference. Sort of. You’ll notice on a restaurant menu that they never call the first course “Hors D’Oeuvres”; those are listed as “Appetizers.” So you’d think that means that appetizers are bigger, more substantial items, and hors d’oeuvres are little noshy things you pass around at a party. But the phrase “hors d’oeuvre” just means “off the work,” where “the work” is taken to mean the featured item (think work of art). A side dish, so to speak. And that says nothing really about the nature or timing of a dish. So an appetizer is a more specific pre-dinner item, but conventionally speaking, an hors d’oeuvre would be the same thing.

Whenever I’m getting ready to entertain guests, I always have to remind myself that the purpose of appetizers is to stimulate the appetite, to get your taste buds producing those gastric juices so that the digestive process will be really primed for the main meal. The idea is not to fill the guests up so that they don’t need the meal.

Now for reasons known only to herself, the Kitchen Goddess likes to have at least three items on the appetizer tray. As the pressure builds and the time grows short, she almost always has an appetizer that gets 86̓d in that last hour before the ball drops. But it’s important to remember that a bowl of salted nuts or olives is a perfectly acceptable appetizer. (Salty foods being great stimulants for the taste buds.) So if you can keep in the habit of stocking salted nuts or chips or pretzels or olives, you’ll always have something that can substitute for a more elaborate item that you no longer have time to produce. Also, if you are like the Kitchen Goddess and occasionally are not completely ready when the guests appear at the door, it’s good to have something to soak up the alcohol during that possibly lengthy time while you’re finishing the main work. Which also means that hors d’oeuvres should not be the kind that need the cook’s attention.

Which brings us to today’s recipes. The first is a cold soup – you folks remember how fond I am of cold soups? Light, mellow-tasting, and a wonderful color, this soup is easy to make a day or two before you serve it. The tang of buttermilk gently balances the natural sweetness of the beets, and the soup is beautifully garnished with olive oil, pickled shallots, and fresh herbs.

Not everyone likes beets, and I get that. Grumpy is in that category. He tasted this soup and said it wasn’t bad, but “In the end, it’s beets.” So if that’s the way you feel about them, that’s okay. But if you’re on the fence about beets, you might give this one a try, because the flavor of golden beets is sweeter, less earthy, and mellower than red beets. And if you actually like beets, well then, you are in for a treat.

Golden beets are easy to find this time of year. And they are great for you. As with most deeply colored veggies, they’re high in many vitamins and minerals. Heart healthy and high in antioxidants, they’re good for kidney function, eyes and skin, blood pressure and cholesterol. They’re also useful in treating anemia and fatigue.

I found this recipe in a New York Times article about The Lost Kitchen, a relatively new restaurant in the wilds of Maine that operates only eight months of the year. Under chef-owner Erin French’s guidance, it has become so popular that she is completely booked from May through New Year’s Eve in a single day. So whether or not you can become one of the lucky customers, you can experience Chef French’s expertise right here, today.

Golden Beet and Buttermilk Soup

Adapted from Erin French, chef-owner of  The Lost Kitchen, as seen in The New York Times.

YIELD: 4 to 6 servings as a first course, 10+ as an appetizer

Ingredients 
2½ pounds golden beets (4-5 large)
1 tablespoon finely chopped shallots
1 tablespoon rice wine vinegar
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more for serving
Freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
2 cups buttermilk
juice of ½ lemon, (a little more than 1 tablespoon)

Garnish:
Small handful of basil leaves
Small handful of dill fronds
⅓ to ½ cup sour cream (optional)

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400°.

Trim the leaves off the beets down to 1-2 inches from the bulb. No need to wash them, and do not cut off the tail of the root. Wrap the beets in aluminum foil or put them into a casserole and cover it tightly with foil. Bake large beets 50-60 minutes. Let them cool in the foil or covered dish. Once they’ve cooled, the skins will rub off easily with your fingers.







In the meantime, make the garnish: In a small bowl, combine chopped shallots and vinegar and let macerate for 20 minutes. Whisk in 2 tablespoons olive oil and season with a few grinds of black pepper.

When the beets are cooked, cut 1 beet into a small, even dice (about ¼ inch), and add it to the shallot mixture. Season to taste with salt and set aside. This will be the garnish.

Cut the remaining beets into large chunks and purée in a blender with the buttermilk and lemon juice for 2 minutes or until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Refrigerate the soup until completely cool.

If you’re serving the soup as a first course at the table, drizzle each bowl with a teaspoon of olive oil. Sprinkle the diced beets/shallots on top, with herbs and sour cream on the side, so guests can garnish their bowls as they like. Or serve it as an hors d’oeuvre in small glasses, with a few drops of oil, a little of the beet-shallot mix, and a few of the herbs. Add sour cream, if you like. (I did not.)

This soup can be made a day or two ahead. Just let the beet-shallot garnish come to room temperature before you serve, so the oil isn’t congealed.

And now for an even easier appetizer.

Cucumbers in Pesto

You probably already keep at least one variation on a  pesto recipe – if not, here are two absolutely swell versions:

■ Basil pesto
■ Arugula pesto

The only other thing you’ll need is a package of Persian cucumbers – or at least that’s what I think they used to be called. Now, they’re so popular they come from Canada and are called mini-cukes. Whatever. They’re small versions of the seedless English cucumbers – milder than regular cukes, with thin skins and almost no seeds. Very nice taste and texture..


Slice the baby cukes at an angle, in pieces about ½ inch thick. Mix them in a bowl with some pesto, and give the mix about a half-hour to combine flavors. Serve with toothpicks. You’ll need about ¼ cup of pesto for 3 mini-cukes.

Note: You can also serve this combination on a bed of lettuce or in small bowls as a salad.

Extreme Packing What’s cooking? Basil Pesto

What a summer of extremes – cold and damp in the Northeast, hot and dry in Texas. In our years of living in New Jersey, we took very few extended vacations during the summer, as it’s normally a glorious time in the Garden State for gardening, golfing, and my favorite food-related activity: trips to the farmers’ market. But in Texas, you can just take so many days over 100º before even “cold and damp” starts to sound really attractive. So this year, in honor of the heat and the economy, we planned a tour of our friends’ vacation houses: New Hampshire, Nantucket, and Martha’s Vineyard.

Sounds easy, right? But something about the process of packing for a trip sends my psyche into overdrive. I have to have all my clothes clean and ironed before I can decide what to take, and I seem incapable of starting that process until, say, the day before we leave. So the final 36 hours before the plane takes off become a marathon of washing, ironing, and last-minute pleas with the dry cleaners.

And what about the contents of the refrigerator? I hate throwing out food, so in addition to packing my clothes, I sliced jicama and washed a container of Sun Gold tomatoes which, together with a pound of blackberries, went into a shopping bag to carry onto the plane, in case we got stranded at the end of the runway for a day. (I think these tendencies are genetic – my grandmother always used to take a banana and a PB&J to the airport, until my mother started taking it away from her with a "Really, mother.") Then I had to freeze the 2 pounds of blueberries I bought before the season runs out on me, and trim back my basil so it doesn't bolt (if basil does that) before I get back. Which of course meant I also had to make two batches of pesto.

Pesto is one of those dishes I find endlessly flexible. Of course, it makes a yummy pasta dish (mixed with cream and a little pasta water), but I also spread it undiluted on bruschetta (thick slices of Italian or French bread, brushed with olive oil and garlic and toasted), or drizzle it over sliced tomatoes and mozzarella, or use it as a dip for fresh veggies, like the tiny Sun Gold tomatoes from my garden. And it freezes really well. The best recipe I’ve found for it is from the original Silver Palate Cookbook. Sometimes I make it with pignoli nuts, and sometimes I stick with the recipe, which calls for walnuts and produces a slightly nuttier taste. Both are terrific. The only really important guideline is to use good quality olive oil. I visited an olive oil company in Italy once, and the owners talked about how expensive it is to make olive oil well, so you should never buy cheap olive oil. Then on a trip to California, I discovered the Napa Valley Olive Oil Manufactory, and now I order the stuff from them by the case.

Basil Pesto (adapted from The Silver Palate Cookbook)

2 cups packed fresh basil leaves
4 large cloves garlic, chopped
1 cup walnuts or pignoli nuts
1 cup good quality olive oil
1 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
1/4 cup grated Pecorino-Romano cheese
salt/freshly ground pepper

Combine basil, garlic, and walnuts in a food processor and pulse until the mixture is coarsely ground. With the processor running, add the olive oil in a slow stream, then scrape the sides of the bowl down and process another 20 seconds. Add the cheeses with a pinch of salt and a liberal grinding of pepper, and process again briefly. Refrigerate at least an hour before serving. Makes about 2 cups.

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Back to my trip preparation, the final pre-boarding task is to straighten up my office, which usually begins around 1 a.m. the night before the flight. But that’s a story too ugly for words.