Beet Salad: Simplicity at its best!

An Alice Waters recipe.


                                                          Beet Salad

Alice Waters. Synonymous with the organic food movement. Restaurateur. Proprietor of the famous Berkeley, CA restaurant, Chez Panisse. 2013 will be the year I visit her establishment!

Our daughter likes to give me a hard time whenever Chez Panisse is brought up in conversation, ever since I posted on FB that I cannot wait to visit this restaurant because of their rule of no electronic devices (cell phones/laptops) are allowed in the restaurant; this is printed on the menu itself. Ruins the ambiance. This is one of my all-time pet peeves - cell phones at the table.

She asks, "That's why you want to visit Chez Panisse? For the no cell phone rule? What about the world renowned food?"

Yes it's about the food, but also for "the rule". If only more restaurants would implement this policy.

What ever happened to wanting a meaningful engagement with family or friends with no interruptions? I'm not talking about checking the time (people are not wearing watches anymore) or if the babysitter has called. But is it so important to know that so-and-so is blowing milk out of his/her nose or what they are having to eat at the moment? Take an hour or so from electronics and enjoy real life a bit - you just may enjoy it.

Can this be any simpler? Beets. Vinegar. Oil. Salt. No, I don't think it can. I toyed with the idea of adding some fresh thyme - I love thyme. But being an Alice Waters recipe I thought I should try it as written first.

We (the husband & I) purchased the most beautiful beets from the farmer's market this past weekend. He adores beets. Originally I was going to make a raw beet and carrot slaw, but I used up all the carrots in the chicken noodle soup I made to soothe the nasty cold he came down with. The slaw will have to wait for our next visit to the farmer's market.

I typed in "simple beet salad" in Google search and came up with the recipe here. I'm thinking this can be made even tastier by tossing the warm beets with the vinaigrette and letting them marinate for a few hours.

Success meter (1-3): 3

If you don't want the red beets to mar the golden beets, bake them separately.

The carrots used in the soup.

I tossed the beats with the vinaigrette seperately so the red beets would not "bleed" into the golden beets.

You can see the red beets seeped their color into the golden beets since I baked and stored them in the same dish (I baked them the day before).

Toss the beets together just before serving.

Chicken Noodle Soup

(Future post.)

You can find the beet salad recipe here.

TWD: Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Loaves

Tuesdays with Dorie baking through Baking with Julia
by Dorie Greenspan
Recipe by Steve Sullivan



This bread has to be good. The contributing baker is Steve Sullivan, founder of Acme Bread.
Acme supplies breads to our local restaurants and grocery stores, and Steve once worked baking bread at Alice Waters' famed Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA.

I have yet to make it over to Chez Panisse, something I have wanted to do for quite some time. A friend of mine eats there a few times a year and I always question her as to what she had, from appetizer to dessert. Always the menu sounds fabulous! The one thing I look forward to beside the awesome food is that they ask that you refrain from using your cell phone or laptops at the table (a pet peeve of mine) - this request is even printed on the menu! I must get there soon..

Sorry to digress - back to the topic at hand: Cranberry-Walnut Pumpkin Loaves.

This recipe screams fall - pumpkin, cranberry, yeast breads. I'm so ready for fall foods, but we have been having such nice awesome weather (high 70's to low 80's) that it just has not been cool enough for soups, stews and the like, but bread I can handle.

The recipe is pretty straight forward. Just plan on two days to make this bread. You need to refrigerate the dough overnight between risings, though I read here that "merrybaker" skipped the refrigeration. I'm a novice bread maker so I followed Mr. Sullivan's directions.

The bread is moist and soft the day of baking, and like the whole wheat loaves they start to become dry by the next day. Maybe that is how it is with homemade bread (i.e. no preservatives). Unfortunately the pumpkin flavor is not very pronounced. Toasted with butter, this is reminiscent to the raisin bread I had as a child, with a slight twang from the cranberries.

Once again, as with the whole wheat loaves we made recently, this is just OK. I feel this bread was not worth the time invested; I was also hoping for more of a pumpkin essence. I'll stick with the awesome quick-bread recipe of Pumpkin Bran Bread which has a lot more flavor, a lot less time to make, and stays moist for several days after baking.

Success meter (1-3): 2

Tip:

Grate your nutmeg into a measuring cup.

I find it easier to get the ground nutmeg 

into the measuring spoon this way.

I had a hard time keeping the cranberries

incorporated in the dough. They kept

wriggling their way out.

After an overnight rest in the refrigerator,

divide your dough and shape into loaves.

The cranberries just want to keep poppin' out!

Originally I was going to use two standard size

loaf pans until I found these burried in the back

of my cupboard. :)

All tucked in and ready to rise.

An hour later - beautiful!

If you're interested in the recipe visit the site of our host:

Rebecca at This Bountiful Backyard

You may also want to check out the LYL link for my fellow

blogger's trials and triumphs of this recipe.

amazon