Beet islands.
I'm not entirely sure what that means but that's the random thing I wrote when I put these pictures here to start this post, right before I went to bed, so I'll keep it. Tired Kelly is tired.
Anyway- I had an influx of chioggia beets, and really wanted to do a prep that kept their color. The (semi-failed)
beet chips didn't really work, so I tried another option suggested by the internets: steaming. This would've been more successful if I had a mandolin...but I'm hesitant to buy one, after that time I cut off part of my thumb slicing squash. A year later I am still missing a part of my thumb print. Fun facts!
Anyway, my slices were on the thicker side so I had to keep them on the heat longer than I would've liked, and as you can see above they faded during the cooking process. A few days in the fridge made them pinker again (as you can see in the first and last pic), but it's still not that same awesome color I was hoping to preserve.
I was inspired by the flavors (and leftovers!) of that
kale and beet salad from the other day, and ate these simply: topped with a little goat cheese, scallions, and black pepper. I ended up sprinkling a little lemon juice on some, which tasted good, but they were fine without.
I'm never sure if some of these presentations I do are nice or dated, but at the very least this was the simplest way to have all the things I wanted to eat together stuck together, so I'm cool with it. The islands above were a bit difficult to eat (though I made less of a mess than I thought I would). Overall I was rather rushed putting these together, so while I ended up with a few pretty looking ones, the vast majority were a mess:
Behind the scenes in my kitchen. Now you know.
