Vegetables

Pickled beets - syltede rødbeder

October 31, 2013Sides, VegetablesTove Balle-PedersenComment

Pickled beets is one of the most common toppings for an open faced sandwich with liver pate. In my home we had them with meatballs or medisterpølse at dinner.

My parents grew beets in their large vegetables garden. My mom made a large batch of pickled beets enough for the whole year. My moms pickled beets were the best, they were worth the work for sure.

When I lived in Denmark, I didn't pickle my own beets, I just bought them at the store. But moving here I wanted to have the taste of the childhood pickled beets. This is how I do.

Ingredients

1 kg beets, scrubbed clean, but not peeled
salt (1 tablespoon pr liter water)

Pickling liquid:

1 liter vinegar
450 g sugar
8 whole cloves
2-3 slices horseradish

Direction:

Wash the beets and trim the stems, leaving about 1/4 inch attached. Don't cut into the beets, they will lose a lot of the juices.

Bring the water to a boil in a large pot. Add salt and the beets and cook until just tender, about 45-60 minutes depending on the size of the beets.

Drain the beets and rinse with cold water and let the beets cool in the cold warter.

Bring vinegar to a boil and add sugar and cloves. Cut of the top and bottom of the beets, and rub the skin of, in a paper towel. Slice the beets to the desired thickness, fill the jars with the sliced beets, and pour in vinegar to cover the beets. Add 1-2 slices horseradish and close lids and allow to cool completely.

The pickled beets are ready to eat after at least 2 weeks, but they will keep for months unopened.

You can add a preservative like Atamon (sodium benzoate) to increase the shelf life.

Oven-roasted potatoes

October 22, 2013Dinner, Sides, VegetablesTove Balle-PedersenComment

Potatoes has been a big part of danish dinners for hundreds of years. Potatoes was a cheap and very filing food. But during the last couple of decades the starchy component of the danes dinner been switched to more and more rise and pasta. But the potato is a healthier choice. Both pasta and rice contains twice as much starch as potatoes, and having whole wheat pasta and brown rice doesn't help.

We had potatoes on the menu 5-6 times a week at home. The potatoes were peeled, boiled and served with a brown gravy and some kind of meat. It was pretty boring. So the first 6 month of moving out, I didn't have potatoes - well I didn't make them my self.

These oven-roasted potatoes is easy to make, they are tasty and colorful. You can use any vegetables you like, the method works for any root vegetables.

Serves 3-4.

Ingredients:

8-10 Potatoes, small firm like fingerlings
2 onions
6-8 garlic cloves
8-10 sweet peppers
2-4 tablespoons pitted olives
1 handful cherry tomatoes
canola oil
salt
piment d'Espelette
3 sprigs rosemary

Direction:

Preheat the oven (or BBQ) to 400°F.
Wash potatoes, peppers tomatoes and rosemary. Peel the onion and chop it into bits-size pieces. Peel garlic cloves. Add all the ingredients to a baking dish (or make a bowl out of aluminum foil) drizzle with oil and season with salt and piment d'Espelette.

Roast for 25-40 minutes until the potatoes are tender. Serve with fish or meats.

If you are roasting the potatoes on your BBQ, use indirect heat.

Fennel salad

September 17, 2013Sides, Salad, Vegetarian, Vegetables, veganTove Balle-PedersenComment

Fennel salad - who comes up with things like this?

One of my danish friends gave me a book on salads by Claus Meyer called Salatværksted (Salad workshop). A great book with salads for every season. One of the first I had to try was this Fennel Salad. It's light, crispy and phenomenal with Salmon. What it lacks in color, it has tenfolds in taste.