Category Archives: Vegetables

A third portion of purple prose – dwarf beans

I could eat these every day/I am eating these every day

This is the only shot I have of the bean dish we have been having night after night the last two weeks. We are coming to the end of them now, they were so pretty when they were in flower and we got loads of them this year. We’ve put some more in the ground and are crossing our green fingers that they will give us a late crop in a couple of months time.

I was given a copy of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s River Cottage Everyday as a present by my lovely friend Mandy, and on my first gallop through it, I came to a halt when I saw this bean dish. Because I am too lazy to go downstairs and drag the book back up here I will give you the general gist of it. Because that is what it is, a general gist of a recipe, more a technique than anything, which you can vary as you please with what you like.

Before cooking they look like this!

Catch your beans, or your carrots, or whatever, cook them lightly with steam so they are cooked but not floppy. If you like garlic, splat and finely chop a clove or two. While the beans are cooking, put a mixture of your favourite seeds and spices in a dry frying pan, throw in some flaked almonds maybe, some pumpkin seeds, coriander, fennel, a pinch of chili, sesame seeds if you are Brian. Get those seeds and little packets out of the cupboard. (Oh yes,  I heard you Michael McIntyre!  Goulash next week….) Heat them up till the almonds start to colour and go brown and the seeds begin to pop a little.

Turn the heat off and then add a Keith Floyd sort of splosh of olive or walnut oil, and the chopped garlic. Give it all a good shuffle in the pan. Don’t turn the heat on again; there will be enough heat in the pan to lightly cook the garlic.  Drain the beans, carrots, whatever veg you are using. Put in a serving bowl,  sprinkle with flaky Maldon sea salt, black pepper, and tip the sizzling,  toasty, and aromatically charged seedy loveliness all over the beans. So good!    Serve with couscous or rice or whatever else is on your table. I suspect that kids won’t eat this with their aversion to bits, but that means all the more for you!   Now I want some more all over again!

Normal bread service will be resumed soon.

Beetroot, Onion and Dill Pickle Salad

Am I alone in preferring boiled to roasted beetroots?

Ready for the fridge!

Every time I have tried the fashionable roast veg treatment on beetroots it has taken longer to cook them, been harder to peel them, and made very little difference to the taste that I can notice, and given a harder textured, denser end result.   I love red peppers, courgettes, sweet potatoes and garlic roasted with a sprig or two of rosemary and a scatter of sea salt and so on, sweet, sticky and delicious, but beetroot?

I like beetroots boiled, old fashioned as it sounds, they come out easy to peel, moist and shiny and make beautiful beetroot and onion salad.

  • 700 grams or so of fresh beetroot
  • 1 or two large Spanish onions (depends how much you like onion and how big your onions are)
  • Bunch of fresh dill (frozen will do if you haven’t got fresh dill)
  • Sugar
  • Salt
  • White Pepper (Black if you haven’t got white is fine)
  • Vinegar of your choice – Red or White wine vinegar is good, or Rice vinegar or a mixture with a little Balsamic thrown in to the mix.
  • Water

Meant to use this picture before

Trim the leaves off the beetroot leaving an inch of so of shoots, leave the roots on the beetroots and boil them whole, resisting the urge to scrub or cut off any little hairy bits, they just bleed more whilst cooking.

Cover in lots of cold water and bring to boil and continue to boil until they are soft. Anything from 40 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on size and age of beetroots.

Peel the beetroots while still hot, the skins will come away easily.

Slice onions into thin rounds. Slice beetroots similarly into rounds. Dilute your chosen vinegar with water. Maybe 1/3 vinegar to 2/3 water, I do it slightly differently each time.

Layer your beetroots and onions in a dish, sprinkling with salt, sugar and white pepper between each layer and if you like dill, put fresh finely chopped dill in with each layer. Then pour the vinegar mixture over the whole lot, it doesn’t have to cover completely as you will turn the salad the following day and there will be more liquid which has come out of the vegetables by then.

Cling film the top of the bowl and put it in the fridge. Turn once a day for about three to four days. Once the onions have turned a good beetroot red colour and began to soften/pickle you can eat it any time after that. Test for readiness by nibbling on a piece of onion!

I haven’t given quantities as people’s tastes vary so much.  For a saltier pickle use 1 tbsp of sugar to 1 tbsp salt, and 1/2 tsp of pepper, for a sweeter pickle increase the sugar to 2 tbsp to 1 tbps of salt.   This should keep for at least 10 days or so in the fridge, if you want to make a pickle that keeps for longer then you will need to use sterile jars and a different method.

Serve with anything you fancy, and watch the glorious pinks bleed across your plate causing chaos.

With yoghurt, lime and a twist of black pepper

PS

Just came across a much simpler salad treatment from the Riverford Veg Blog. This is where these beetroots originated from (as small seedlings in a planting out box that we got in the Spring). Guy boils his beetroots too, so I am not alone ! But thanks for reading this post anyway.