AKICILJ: the bitter green edition

[mrissa]

timprov has already done the grocery shopping this morning, because he is efficient like that, and he has returned home with beets. Red beets! Golden beets! We have beets. We also have plans for beets.

What we do not have plans for, but have quantities of anyway, is beet greens. They come attached to the beets. They are huge and luxurious and occupying more of our fridge than I really expected.

Does anybody know of anything nice that can be done with beet greens? My mother is not fond of this type of green, so my first line of culinary inquiry is not helping this time around. I like recipes, but I also like "cook 'em for awhile with some of this and some of that" level of specificity--does not have to be measured in tablespoons. (Or coffee spoons. Or T.S. Eliot.) (Bonus points for T.S. Eliot, though.)

Comments

Beet Greens

[hairyape68.livejournal.com]

Swiss chard is indeed a variety of beet (Beta vulgaris)selected for the greens rather than the root. The Romagnolis' Table suggests boiling leaves and stems, draining, and dressing with olive oil and lemon juice. We cook the stems about 2 minutes, add the leaves to cook for another 2 minutes. These are good even without any dressing, but oil and vinegar are good too.

For beet greens, I'd try eating some of the stems raw. If they are very tough and flavorless, then maybe they should be cooked separately, so they can be thrown out if they don't cook up nicely. Otherwise, treat as chard. We do.