I’m not a lover of beets. I’m not alone in that consideration; a lot of people don’t love beets. I imagine it’s nervous-making, publishing a beet recipe. The cookbook author must sit at the computer, just knowing that readers will skip right past it, onto something with potatoes, or carrots, anything but beets.
I’m don’t dislike beets so much that I’ll skip right past — I’ll read the recipe. Might even make a mental note to try it someday. But in all my years of cooking, I’ve only ever tried one beet recipe. Two, if you count this one today.
It’s not that I hate beets. I don’t. I flew over the moon when I tasted the smoked beets with halibut at Saul in Brooklyn. At Town House, too, the foie gras with beets nearly killed me dead, it was so good. I’m not a hater, no, but a non-lover, which means I’m game to have others serve beets to me, but I’m hard-pressed to exert my own cooking-energy on them.
Milk House Farm, however, has been showcasing beets at their farm stand lately. They grow a handful of different varieties, all gorgeous gems, and all impossible to pass up. Adding to that, I’ve been on a quasi-diet of small-portion, vegetable-heavy dinners, in the attempt to slim down to my ideal weight for our wedding (a hard thing to do, considering I can’t exercise because of my back — though, I’m happy ecstatic to report brag that I’ve lost 15 pounds already) so beets went into my grocery bag recently.
I found a recipe with beets and shrimp marinated in ginger from Jean Georges Vongerichten in the New York Times. New York Times recipes in general prove to be delicious, and recipes by Jean Georges hardly ever disappoint. So I cooked some beets. Roasted them, to be exact.
After they were roasted, I started to tweak the recipe. I added an orange, and swapped balsamic vinegar for the sherry. I sauteed rather than grilled the shrimp (since the shrimp is only cooked for a minute or two, it’s not worth starting up the grill) and dressed the beets a little sooner than the recipe called for.
It came together fabulously — I’d done it! I cooked beets. And I loved them. The in-your-face sweetness of beets works here, since it’s tempered by the ginger — whose pungent flavor lingers in the shrimp, in the dressing. I’d say you could have the salad of dressed beets and orange by itself, with a hefty sprinkling of chives, but the shrimp (browned and crisp, marinated just long enough for the ginger to saturate without overwhelming), perched atop the salad so that the juices drip and mix into the dressing, really completes the dish.
So, here’s the recipe. (For those of you smart people who haven’t skipped past to the next non-beet blog post by now.)
Gingered-Beet Salad
serves 4 (small portions)
adapted (heavily) from Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Gingered-Beet Salad recipe
4 medium beets, scrubbed well
1 pound large shrimps, shelled
1 tablespoons canola oil
1 2-inch piece ginger, peeled and grated (divide grated ginger into two lumps)
4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar (1 tablespoon will be used for shrimp, 3 for beet dressing)
2 tablespoons good, fruity extra-virgin olive oil
1 orange, segmented
kosher or good sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
2 tablespoons 1/2-inch-length chives
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wrap the beets in two layers of aluminum foil and roast until fork-tender, about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Cool, peel and cut the beets into small chunks and set aside.
Toss the shrimps in a mixture made from 1 tablespoon of the oil, half of the grated ginger and 1 tablespoon of the vinegar. Marinate for 1 hour.
Make dressing for the beets: In a medium bowl, add some salt and pepper and balsamic, then slowly add in olive oil, whisking constantly to emulsify. Add beet and orange segments and mix well to dress everything evenly.
Take shrimp from marinade and salt and pepper all over. Heat a pan over medium-high (or a touch higher) heat with a little bit of canola oil. Add shrimp to the pan and cook until well-browned (about 2 minutes per side, or up to 5 minutes total).
Arrange dressed beets on a platter. Sprinkle with chives and season to taste with salt and pepper. Place shrimp on top of beets and sprinkle on a few more chives and some extra salt and pepper (if needed). Serve hot or at room temperature.
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