UnRecipe: Just Beet It... Just Beet it...

No, I'm not wearing a sparkly glove on one hand and Moonwalking my way through the kitchen. But man, I sure wish I was! Sham-ON! Apropos of nothing beyond the fact that we wound up with some late-season beets, it's yet ANOTHER beet post. I keep hoping there's some subliminal message that will get through to Mr. Wasabi's brain that beets are not, in fact, gross. All we are saaaaaying... is give beets a chaaaaaance!

Beety, not meaty - a tart for your vegetarian friends! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

'Twas the season of beets in this year of our lord two-thousand-and-eleventy. Or more to the point, the season where I wasn't foisting beets onto workmates because I didn't know what to do with them. Seriously, I'd get a bag full of  beets in our CSA deliveries, I'd stare at them blankly for a while and then hit the "bring it to work" button where I'd usually give them to my friend, Ms. Radish and Rose. She was one of the big proponents of beets, and I trust her taste, so I decided to be more persistent with the preparation of the rooty little buggers. Lo and behold, I honed in on a way to prepare them at home that wasn't too fussy, highlighted the sweetness of beets, and made it something I could enjoy eating and not feel like it was a chore to eat my veggies. As seen in previous beet-themed posts, this of course meant calling in the Puff Pastry and Goat Cheese Brigade, totally removing any and all health benefits that beets can provide, but what can I say? The crisp buttery flakiness of pastry with creamy cheese and sweet roasted beets is quite literally, unbeetable. Har har. I know, punch me now, I deserve it.

Hot Pockets, brought back from the Dark Side - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I blame television and mass media for this one. The annoying "Hot Pockets" jingle was stuck in my head one day (just you wait,  it'll get stuck in yours, too) and it ultimately led me towards craving the little crispy devils, but I stopped short of going to the grocery store and buying some over-processed ghost from my college years. Total disclosure, I lived off those things when I was in school, the magical pastry-burrito that you could throw into the microwave, frozen as a Cro-Magnon in the tundra, but somehow the weird coated paper sleeve would both heat and crisp the Pocket to desired Hotness. Move over Dumbledore, this here's real magic. And if you were really lucky, the first bite wouldn't napalm the skin off the insides of your mouth from all the molten cheese inside. Doesn't quite sell the magic of Hot Pockets, but you ask most anyone and those who went to college and had to fend for themselves during some lean times, they'll admit they went through a phase where they ate these bewitching microwavable hand pies morning, noon and night.

Much like people, I don't think foods are born evil. The idea of a little hand-sized pie is not a bad one. It's when it gets seized by the Big Business of Food, mass-produced and frozen for instant gratification that the concept goes to the Dark Side and takes over most of the known universe. I saw there was still good left in Darth Hot Pocket, and restored it to its earlier self, as Anakin Hand Pie, with some roasted beets and goat cheese sandwiched between a layer of puff pastry. I did have to use Darth Puff Pastry, going with frozen store-bought because I don't make my own, so maybe there was still a little bit of the Evil Empire in this. But we'll just call it "flavor," shall we?

Putting together the deliciousness of beet tarts and hand pies - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Of course, any time you make a little stuffed food item, be it hand pie or won ton, you always wind up with extra filling. I anticipated I'd have more beets and cheese than pastry, so I saved a couple of small sheets of dough, lined some mini tins and piled in the rest of the filling to make tarts. While the little faux Hot Pockets were crispy and light snacks, the beet tarts were a full meal, going well with a salad for dinner that night. It was most definitely one of those weeks where I was serving my cravings first and Mr. Wasabi was eating leftovers from another beet-less meal, but he at least eyeballed the tarts with hungry curiosity before slinking away and realizing it was a rainbow of roasted beets. Maybe one of these days, I can finally bring Brock over to the Beet Side.

And now, for something completely different - radish and risotto! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

And on a semi-related but out-of-the-blue note -- along with beets in our CSA box, we did find ourselves with quite a few radishes. It's sort of related, as it's a rooty-tooty vegetable and, like the beets, I was looking for a way to use them up. If I wasn't already worn out on salads, I'd have been thankful, but I wanted a way to use the radishes in a dish that was more exciting and quite frankly, hot. To go with the beet tarts, I found this recipe  for Romano Risotto with Radishes on Epicurious. Radish and risotto? Weird, right? But oddly, the buttery richness of risotto kind of mimics that richness of buttered bread when you have one of those radish tea sandwiches. You don't really cook the radishes into the risotto, it's more like you lightly pickle them and use it as a garnish. But it works well and the pickled radishes become a lovely pink color. It ends up being a nice, if not starchy/carby vegetarian meal, if you're looking for an interesting thing to make for Meatless Monday.

UnRecipe: The Bay Harbor Beet Butcher

Don't be alarmed. There wasn't much suffering involved. Nary a scream, nor a pitiful whimper for help. Only silence...

Call Dexter, he knows spatter patterns like a mofo - Crime Scene Photo by Wasabi Prime

Scary, isn't it? This is the biggest reason why I don't prepare beets very often. They literally look like bloody effing murder on every prep surface in your kitchen, including your hands (Out, damned spot!). Even when you scrub everything, it just turns the stains Barbie-pink and it winds up looking like you slaughtered Hello Kitty. That's not much of an improvement. I probably should have saved this post for Halloween, it would have been so ghoulishly appropriate. But then it wouldn't have been as seasonally fitting, as this meal was brought to you by the Magical Mystery CSA Tour, and the latest deliveries have been Beet City, USA.

Beet-cheese/cheese-beet; obscure fast food reference attack! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

But really -- look at how a root vegetable murder scene can turn into pure deliciousness? I think it's more about how puffed pastry pretty much makes everything better. It's got that universal "mo' bettah" mojo that bacon has. Bacon fat, butter fat -- put your hands together for a sandwich of awesomeness. Or truly greasy fingers. In this case, the Herbed Cheese and Roasted Beet Tart remained meat-free, and therefore bacon-less, but it was still pretty enjoyable. Who says you have to go without on a Meatless Monday? If it were a Calorie/Fat-less Monday, you'd be doomed, but no one's suggested that dreadful food theme day yet.

So how, exactly did this crazy concoction come about? The CSA delivery box was the spark, I always keep a package of puff pastry in the freezer, and I had fresh herbs and cream cheese at the ready. Shouldn't we all? Mr. Wasabi is not a fan of beets, although he oddly admits to enjoying borscht, which is the soup that takes beets to Eleven. But beets in a non-borscht form usually inspires his scrunched-up five-year-old-face of FAIL. To be honest, I wasn't always a fan of beets either. It's one of those vegetables where you probably had them for the first time in one of their worst possible prep scenarios, like from a can, sitting around way too long on a salad bar line. It's no wonder they get such a bad rep. But I've been thankful to have beets prepared in truly beautiful ways by local chefs -- roasted and paired with creamy goat cheese in salads, pickled and served simply with fresh bread and butter; the farther from fuss, the better. I like how the natural sweetness of beets further intensify when you roast them, plus it makes it easier to remove the tough outer skin. Even if it means your hands will look like you've been fingerpainting using only magenta ink all day.

Dexter is darkly dreaming of beets right now - Photos  of food by Wasabi Prime

The combination of the sweet, butter-soft roasted beets on a layer of melty herbed cream cheese and crispy, flaky puff pastry was pretty heavenly. And likely ruined whatever health benefits beets are supposed to have, but hey, baby steps for this newbie-beet-appreciator. The Dexter reference was just too irresistable, given his character's expertise as a blood spatter specialist. I haven't even seen every episode and we're still stuck on a DVD from season four that has yet to be returned to the Netflix queue, so no spoilers! He may not even be the Bay Harbor Butcher anymore for all I know, but I do have to commend the series for creating one of the most clever opening sequences, with the making of breakfast looking totally terrifying. If you've seen this, you know what food/murder double entendre I speak of! I think that would be a wonderful way to spend a macabre evening -- bloody murder cheesy beet tart while watching Dexter episodes.

UnRecipe: A-Team Montage Meal

In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire... The A-Team. (courtesy Wikipedia)

*Cue awesome opening theme music, totally rad all-black van with red stripe along the side, and lots of 1980s controlled pyrotechnic explosions*

I had a refrigerator full of random leftover ingredients from various meals. Something needed to happen, lest mass spoilage take over. And I had not the awesome manpower of Hannibal, Face, B.A. Barracus, nor their uncanny ability to break out "Howling Mad" Murdoch from the psych ward for yet another weekly hour-long episode. I took matters into my own hands. By the Power of MacGyver cooking, inspired by several seasons' worth of A-Team montages where the team inexplicably built a fully loaded armored vehicle out of some bailing wire and an old beater Volvo, I set to work, creating new meals of scraps and spare parts.

I pity the fool who doesn't like this blue cheese and tomato tart - Photo by Wasabi Prime

There was a bit of pie dough remaining from the goat cheese and roasted plum tart. I also still had a handful of fresh Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes from blog buddy, Picket Fence, as well as chunks of leftover blue cheese. It wasn't an armored tank miraculously pieced together to raise hell on some vigilante baddies, but a rustic blue cheese and tomato tart was certainly disarming on an edible level. I flattened the spare bit of dough into a rough circle, put a thin layer of fig jam (yes, I realize I'm addicted) on the bottom, crumbled the cheese over that, and dotted the whole tomatoes over the surface. I folded the edges in, so it created a low wall, and drizzled a bit of olive oil and lemon thyme over the top before popping it into the oven to bake itself to roasted cheesy goodness. Delicious results that would convince even the ill-tempered B.A. to agree to get on a plane.

The broiler hides all manner of odd-shaped vegetable scrap sins - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Waste not, want not, even if that includes melon-baller shaped scraps of vegetable innards that were saved from hollowing out several yellow table squash for the Meatless in Seattle post. I know, it's weird that I kept them, but there was enough to take up a big plastic yogurt container and it felt like a terrible waste to simply toss them. I was hell-bent with the conviction of Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, to use up those odd-shaped scraps. Sauteeing the squash with more refugees from the vegetarian meal like homemade pesto, and tossing with cooked penne pasta, I put the creamy mix into a baking dish, covered with leftover fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese, and placed it under the blazing coils of the broiler to get browned and crispy. Sure, it wasn't fancy, but this impromptu baked pasta had delicious flavor of summer pesto with the rich creamy texture of melted cheese, and no remainders of the Meatless in Seattle meal went to waste.

Chorizo is just another way of convincing us that pork truly is a magical animal - Photos by Wasabi Prime

A-Team, meet the Protein Team. A cryogenically-preserved bit of chorizo from the Way-Back Machine of stuffed pattypan squash yielded two egg-themed dishes. The leftover savory custard from the goat cheese and plum tart filled a spare ramekin, which was partially filled with the chorizo, and a mighty meaty quiche was created. The remainder of the chorizo was mixed with some defrosted mashed sweet potato. I had a little container of roasted, mashed sweet potato also in the freezer, no lie. I made pan-fried croquettes from this mixture, browning the outsides and then serving them up with a fried egg over the top. Not quite sure what kind of dish that would be, other than simply saying it was tasty and filled with comfort food delight.

At the end of several weeks' worth of meal leftovers and wayward ingredients, everything found a way to be incorporated into a new meal. As Hannibal would say during each A-Team episode, I love it when a plan comes together. Amen, to that. *Freeze frame, then let credits roll *

UnRecipe: These Tarts are Plum-Tasty, Y'all

Howdy, pard'ners. It's another rootin' tootin' post about delicious grub. This here post is about how plum-tasty Italian plums are when baked in a tart. GAH. I can't write like that beyond two sentences, so that's all I'll make anyone endure in a faux stereotypical cowboy voice. But Italian plums, the smaller, egg-shaped cousins of the more typical round plums one sees in the produce aisles, are a nice seasonal ingredient to take advantage of in the waning months of our fading summer light. I used the wisdom of the Foodie Wizardress of OZ, Donna Hay, to inspire this post about Roasted Plums in a Goat Cheese Tart.

You saucy little tart, you! - Photo by Wasbi Prime

Ms. Hay's recipe featured figs -- something I wholly agree with, but I wanted to take advantage of my new personal produce dealer and fellow blogger, Ms. Picket Fence, who has been so kind to the Wasabi household by sharing fruits of her garden bounty. Sounds naughty, but it's really quite nice of her and Mr. Picket Fence to have given us such delicious treats, some of which that have already been featured in previous posts. This delivery of goodies included a bowlful of Italian plums, freshly picked from their backyard tree. They were a glorious deep reddish purple, almost black, with the dusty pale finish plums get when they ripen. Slicing each one open to reveal a luscious canary-yellow interior, the pits easily popped out (to my relief, as there were quite a few to split!), and the halves were placed on a baking sheet to roast on a high heat until softened. I roasted the figs ahead of time because I knew they would give off a bit of liquid and I didn't want them waterlogging the tart as it baked. It's an extra step, I know, but it's worth it, and it really concentrates the flavor down to a delicious, caramelized intensity.

Fresh Italiano Picket Fence plums and just-baked tart, prior to its om-nommy demise. - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Cheater Confessional: I was keen to have my way with this tart, so I took a shortcut and bought premade pie dough crust. The Horror. I know, I know -- making your own pâte brisée, including leaf lard in the dough, would be the way to go to make the ultimate savory tart. And when I'm not doing this after work during the middle of a busy week, I will at some point attempt a proper lardy-good pie dough crust, as it really is something I've always wanted to try. But during the weekday shuffle, I chose one shortcut to trade out for roasted plum goodness.

Food blogging Hail Marys aside, I took the quickie pie dough and divided the two rounds across the mini tart pans I have. I don't know why I have these bitty tins and not one giant one. I've admitted in old posts that I have a bizarre love for miniature and individual-sized portions. They also cook up faster, which is a bonus. I did a blind bake, docking the bottoms with a fork and letting it partially bake in the the oven while I mixed the custard filling. The recipe doesn't call for this, but I just like doing it because I find it creates a nice moisture barrier and keeps the crust bottom crispy.

I found the inspiration recipe for Donna Hay's fig tart on her website, which I copied below, but you should see her photo, as it's quite lovely and way prettier than mine. Swapping the figs for roasted plums, and using a sprinkle of lemon thyme instead of chives for herbs were the "Un" of this UnRecipe post, otherwise it's almost a real recipe follow. And oh snap, she uses store-bought pie crust too, but it just sounds better when she calls it shortcrust pastry. A good deal nicer-sounding than Krogers Pie Dough, that's for sure.

Once the crusts were partly baked and slightly cooled, I spread the goat cheese in each one and divided the custard between the little regiment of tart tins. The little flattened, roasted plums were arranged on the top, and back into the oven they went. I think this recipe is flexible enough to where you could really add almost anything to it. The plums were nice, as their sweet/sour flavor went well with the creamy goat cheese. I think any roasted stone fruit would go nicely, since they share a similar flavor profile. I think if I did this again with plums, I'll use rosemary or even lavender. The lemon thyme is subtle and was almost lost in the heavier flavors, and strong herbs like rosemary would I think hold up well against the other ingredients. That thought will have to be held for another season, as -- much like the plums -- these summer days are at an end and a new season is about to begin! Happy Fall, y'all!

Fig and Goat's Cheese Tart - Donna Hay Magazine
2 sheets store-bought shortcrust pastry
125g goat's curd* or soft goat's cheese
4 black figs, halved
3 eggs
¾ cup (180ml) single (pouring) cream
1 tablespoon chopped chives
½ cup (20g) finely grated parmesan
sea salt and cracked black pepper

Preheat oven to 180°C (360°F). Cut each pastry sheet into 4 squares. Line 8 x lightly greased 8cm-round, fluted tart tins with pastry. Trim excess pastry and lightly prick bases with a fork. Divide the goat’s curd and fig halves between the cases. Place eggs, cream, chives, parmesan, salt and pepper in a bowl and whisk until well combined. Pour into cases and bake for 25 minutes or until puffed and set. Cool to room temprature and serve. Makes 8. * Goat’s curd is fresh goat’s cheese available from delicatessens.

* Post Script - Delicious thanks to Tastespotting for posting the photo of the Italian plums! Thanks also to Serious Eats' Photograzing for posting pics of the plums and the tart!