Fava Bean & Beet Salad

I dunno where YOU are, but up here in the Pacific North West, the sun has been shining more than usual - and around here that is a good thing.  The result is beautiful beets, the arrival of the fava beans and spectacular lettuces.  And then, fresh garlic is here to.  That means salads with garlicky vinaigrette.

This year, I ran across a fascinating hybrid of Chioggia (candy stripe) beets and golden beets.  They ended up looking particularly psychedelic.

The hardest part about this salad is the fava beans - they need to come out of their well-padded, fuzzy pods AND out of their tough, slippery, light green skins.  But go ahead, don't be afraid.  Jump in and try this one.  It is worth the effort.  Other than the lettuce, everything is really hearty, so you can make  lots of beets, onions and beans one cool night, then make this salad over and over on hot steamy days.

Fava Bean & Pickled Beet Salad

(Serves 1 for an excellent lunch.  Multiply for the crowd you have.  OR, make lots, and have the salad several times.  The pickled beets and blanched favas keep for about a week in the fridge.)

This is what you do with favas and beets to make them easier to handle – which is important when you find out how tasty this combination is.

Ingredients:

beets - 2 small, any color

fava beans 4-5 pods

lettuce – 1 small head or 5-6 leaves from a large head

fresh cheese – crumbles (think goat cheese, queso fresco, feta)

sweet onion – ¼ of a large one, or 1 small

herbs – a handful of what’s handy (dill & parsley are excellent)

pickling liquid –

water – 1 C

vinegar – ½ C (rice, cider or wine)

peppercorns – 6

cinnamon stick – 1 (or 6 allspice berries)

cloves – 2 whole

salt – 2 tsp

sugar – 2 Tbs

dressing –

3 Tbs used pickling liquid

pepper (& salt) -  to taste

mustard – 2 tsp

garlic – 2 cloves (fresh garlic if you see it!)

tasty oil - ¼ C (nice olive oil is excellent here)

optional – garlic bread or nifty crackers

Equipment:

knife

cutting board

vegetable peeler

saucepan

slotted spoon

2 – 3 medium and small bowls

sauce pan with lid

whisk or fork

small snap-top container with tight lid for mixing dressing (or another bowl & whisk)

salad spinner (optional)

salad bowl or serving plate

measuring cups and spoons

Prep:

Grab the fava pods.  Break off the stem end, use it to pull the sting off the top seam of the pod.  Pull out the beans (but leave them in their skins – the trick for getting them off is a little further down).

Chop the greens off the beets if they have them.  If they are small, tender and tasty looking, put them with your lettuces, or to the side for cooking later (just like chard).

Peel the beets with your vegetable peeler.  Slice them into wedges the thickness of your pinky, or thinner.

Rinse and dry your lettuce, and any optional herbs (use your salad spinner here if you have one).

Slice the onion thinly.

Measure out all the dressing ingredients into the small snap-top container EXCEPT for the pickling liquid.

Measure out the pickling liquid ingredients into the saucepan.

Cook:

Put the pickling liquid ingredients in the saucepan, on the stove.  Bring to a boil.

Put the fava beans in the boiling liquid.  Fish one out with the slotted spoon after 3 minutes – run under cool water so you can handle it.  See if the bean slips out of the  pale green skin easily.  If not – try each minute until they do.  When the skin slips off easily, scoop out the rest of the beans and let them cool in one of the small bowls.

Put the sliced beets and half the onions into the pickling liquid.  Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.  Let them simmer until they are fork tender – this will take about 10 minutes.

While the beets are cooking, peel the fava beans (run under cool water if you need to, so you can handle them).  Also chop or crumble a tablespoon or two of cheese.

Make the optional garlic bread or toast.

When the beets are cooked through, take the saucepan off the heat.

Add 3 Tbs of the pickling liquid to the dressing and shake it well to combine all the ingredients.

Combine the chopped herbs, beets, fava beans and onions (both pickled and raw) and cheese.  Toss with enough dressing to make the salad tasty.  Enjoy with our without the garlic bread.

Variation:  If you are using regular onion, pickle it all!

Add, subtract and substitute ingredients as you need to.

Sweet lettuces like little gem, romaine, Boston and bibb are especially good.  Roasted nuts and seeds go well in here as well.

"Mom, Does 'Earthy' Mean it Tastes Like Dirt?"

Beets.

I tell ya', love or hate 'em.

At least that's what I thought 'till I gave them another try.  Because I had nothing to say to a beet except, "no thank you."  But they started showing up in my CSA box.  And they last forever.  I mean I can ignore arugula for 2 weeks, and then can throw it away without guilt - because it has gone bad.  But those beets, they were still beets a month later.  So not to be daunted, I tried fixing them in some desperate new ways.  And found some things that made me say, "huh?  These actually have potential."  And through sheer force of personality - or force of something, I got my husband to try them (again) too.

Here's the thing.  Except for the adorable, non-threatening early baby beets that are the size of walnuts:

most beets come across like this:

Definitely associated with dirt, and - in this case actually - bigger than your head.  Just not appealing.

And then beet lovers insist on serving them like THIS:

Look at their stripy-ness!

 or this

borscht - you have to try it!  See it has sour cream, it's great!
(apologies to Simply Recipes -
it actually looks like a very good borscht recipe)

 or this

beet salad - where you can really taste the beet-i-ness

But for the rest of us - well, beets do taste a bit, err, ummm earthy.  ("Say it mom, they taste like dirt!")
OK, no ducking out of it, there is definitely the taste of the soil about them.  Or well, really - they are awfully sweet for a vegetable (high sugar content), and they are very low in sodium (taste very bland to our sodium desiring palates), and have a pretty neutral pH (are neither sour - acid, nor bitter - basic).  So  for most of us, they are in dire need of adjustment.

And as the boy genius in my life pointed out, if they were just cut up smaller, they could actually be good.

After all - who goes around chomping up huge plain mouthfuls of arugula, watercress, kale, broccoli or even spinach?  All of these veg need help, and do best when given the appropriate companions.

So how to adjust your beets so they are fit to go out in public - and get consumed:

Step 1:  Make them smaller.  Even the baby beets, when I first tried them raw, were "wafer-thin" to quote a little Monty Python.

BAD:  bigger than a fork

GOOD: very-thin or small beety-bits suitable for matching with other produce.

Step 2: Find good flavor contrasts.  Sharp, Sour, and Crunchy all compliment and elevate the beet.  It after all is soft, sweet and somehow bland.  And, yes, earthy.
But the beet also has a complex set of flavors, that when uncovered, are actually good - no, great!
So do not serve them alone to novices.
Match them with the right partners.

Sharp (or pungent) flavors include  - onions, bitter greens, or strong cheeses.  And radishes - also sliced thin.

Sour - vinegar or citrus.  Use sour-er vingars like cider and rice rather than sweeter ones (like balsamic). Lemon and lime juice or grapefruit segments.

Crunchy - Nuts! Toast!  Beets when properly cooked do have a "cooked carrot" texture about them that can be off putting to those that have bad childhood vegetable memories (I see the raised hands) or continue to have issues with certain textures (and the other hands).  But throwing a handful of roasted pistachios, hazelnuts or almonds can do wonderful things.
And eaten with a crispy piece of toast (with garlic butter?), or a crispy salty cracker - well, now we're talkin'.

All of these tamp down the bad and pop the good to the top.

Step 3: Dressing!  They are a vegetable, and they don't have (much) sodium.  And the sweet benefits from a little pungent heat (mustard and garlic).

So get out a small tupperware with a water-tight lid.  Use it to shake up your tasty vinaigrette dressing.

Basic Vinaigrette - in the small tupperware
a) pinch of salt, pinch of pepper
b) 1 crushed/chopped garlic clove (or 1tsp minced garlic)
c) 2 Tbs acid (vinegar or citrus juice)
d) 1tsp mustard (any kind)
e) 4 Tbs oil - (something tasty if you have it)

pop on the lid - shake it 'til it's cloudy and combined

Note: taste and add salt and pepper and vinegar as needed.  You can whisk this all together in a small bowl with a whisk or a fork too.

Now, make a salad.

BOWL - choose one big enough to toss things around
BIG SPOONS - for tossing your salad - OK any salad servers will work
In the bottom - beet bits (cubes), chopped onions
pour in plenty of dressing to coat (you only made a little dressing - you'll be OK) and toss the onions and beets.

Wash your greens.
Find that handful of nuts.
Cheese - break up the blue cheese or goat cheese into small chunks.

Toss everything together.
Toast the bread - or find the crackers.

And then make it look something like this.

Yup - I had GOLDEN beets for this.  

Enjoy.

P.S. For whatever reason - beets pair better with gin, vodka (The Russians!) and bitter beer than they do with wine.  But if you MUST have wine, dry white.