More Fun with Beets

I don’t just view beets as a non-toxic source of food coloring. They’re actually one of my favorite vegetables, and have been ever since I was a kid. Nonconformist that I was even then, I have always loved beets, and their accompanying greens, in every form I could get them.

One of the beauties of beets is that you get two vegetables for the price of one if you buy them with the tops on, as you should definitely strive to do since that keeps the beets fresh longer too. Beet greens are on the mild end of the greens spectrum, very close to spinach in texture and right next to chard, their near-relative, in flavor, but with thinner and more tender stems. This makes beet greens an ideal replacement or companion to either, as in the filling for this luxurious, thrice-green lasagna.

The combination of spinach and ricotta in lasagna, ravioli, or other filled pasta may be classic, but to be perfectly honest, it can also be kind of boring. You’re never going to offend anyone with it, but you won’t wow anyone either. Mixing in greens with a little more personality — in this case, the mellow mineral note of the beet greens and the bright peppery note of arugula — brings in genuine wow potential. Since I strongly prefer a white lasagna over a red one when the filling is this green, the more complex combination of greens creates a nice balance against the richness of the bechamel. This not-too-cheesy, creamy yet assertive lasagna is a great fit for the cooler temperatures we’re finally getting.

In case you’re wondering, the beets that came with these greens were roasted — my favorite way to cook them, because it concentrates all that sweetness instead of bleeding it into the boiling water — and turned into a vaguely Eastern European salad that I will probably write up next week.

Spinach, Arugula and Beet Green Lasagna
Serves 6-8

For the filling:
3 tablespoons olive oil
15 ounces baby spinach
15 ounces baby arugula
Greens from two bunches beets
1 small onion, finely diced
2 shallots, finely diced
15 ounces ricotta
1/4 cup grated parmesan
Salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For the sauce:
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 shallot, minced
4 tablespoons all-purpose flour
2 cups milk
1/4 cup pureed canned tomatoes
Salt, freshly ground pepper, and freshly grated nutmeg to taste

For assembly:
6-8 sheets no-boil lasagna noodles
1 cup shredded mozzarella
1/4 cup grated parmesan

Thoroughly wash all the greens, and slice the beet greens into thin ribbons.

Heat the olive oil in a large, heavy-bottomed pot and saute the onion and shallots until transparent. Add the greens in big handfuls, turning with tongs to cook evenly, and adding more greens as soon as the batch before wilts down enough to make room.

Once all the greens have wilted, set them in a strainer over a bowl until most of the liquid has drained off. Squeeze thoroughly to remove any remaining liquid, then turn the greens out on a cutting board and chop into bite-sized pieces. Put the greens in a bowl, stir in the ricotta and 1/4 cup parmesan, and season assertively with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Combine the butter and the minced shallot in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until the butter has completely melted and the shallots have softened. Whisk in the flour and cook for an additional minute or two, then whisk in the milk. Simmer for at least five more minutes, stirring regularly, until the sauce is well thickened.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Spread an 8×8 Pyrex pan with enough sauce to generously cover the bottom, and nestle in enough noodles to form a single layer without overlaps. Spread several tablespoons of sauce over the noodles, add half the filling in an even layer, and sprinkle with a handful of mozzarella. Repeat the layering process with the remaining half of the filling, topping with a third layer of noodles. Add the tomato puree to the remaining sauce, pour the sauce over the top layer of noodles, and sprinkle the rest of the mozzarella and parmesan evenly over the top.

Cover the pan with foil and set on a baking sheet in case of drips. Bake for 30 minutes, then remove the foil and bake another 15 minutes, until the sauce is bubbling, the noodles yield to a sharp knife, and the cheese is golden-brown. Switch on the broiler and cook for an additional 3-5 minutes for a really brown and burnished top.

Cool for 10-15 minutes to firm up the lasagna and prevent serious roof-of-mouth burning.

Notes:

Be sure to season the filling really aggressively, since the noodles, cheese and sauce will mute the flavor a bit.

The addition of the small amount of tomato puree to the sauce is not enough to impart noticeable tomato flavor; it just adds some color and used up a small amount of canned diced tomatoes I had lying around anyway. You could easily leave that out.

If you don’t have beet greens, you could use a large bunch of Swiss chard instead, but trim away the stems and just use the leaves here. The stems can be chopped and added to soup or pasta with olive oil and garlic later in the week, but they’re a little too firm for this filling.

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Seeing Red

So one of my coworkers requested I make red velvet cupcakes for my regular Monday-morning office treat, which posed a bit of a dilemma. While I’m not a food nazi, I do try to avoid the patently unnatural, and red velvet cake is defined by the glowing red produced by huge quantities of artificial food coloring.

What to do: compromise my principles, or settle for less-incendiary red from some more natural source?

As much as I like to please my coworkers, the idea of pouring two bottles of blood-red fluid straight from some Frankenfood plant on the New Jersey turnpike weirded me out too much, so I decided to go the natural route. Since research pointed to beets as an accepted coloring agent in the early history of the red velvet cake, and beets are one of my favorite vegetables, that’s what I chose to experiment with.

My first attempt used a Cook’s Country recipe, since despite my continuing annoyance with Kimball for the polenta fiasco, a lot of bloggers had used it with good results. While I agreed that the taste and texture were good, the pretty magenta color of the batter baked out to an extremely generic tan. I got no complaints when I passed them off as Brown Suede cupcakes, but I still wanted to make genuinely red red velvet without resorting to food coloring.

A little more research turned up the cause of the color change and a potential solution. Rose Levy Berenbaum’s most recent cake book has a recipe for red velvet cake, which uses artificial color but includes a note about baking soda neutralizing the natural pigments in beet juice. Her batter, in contrast, is highly acidic, which should preserve the color.

And it did! Although there was a little fading from bright raspberry to dusky pink in the oven, the resulting cupcakes were definitely in the red end of the spectrum. Because it’s an egg-white-only chiffon batter, it was considerably drier than the conventional Cook’s Country one, but a thick coating of cream cheese frosting mostly took care of it.

I won’t call these the best cupcakes I’ve ever posted here, but they’re perfectly respectable and they are a legitimately non-toxic red. And no, they really don’t taste like beet, I swear. They taste mildly of cocoa and of the cream cheese frosting, which, besides the inflammatory color, is what I understand the whole point of red velvet to be.

Non-Radioactive Red Velvet Cupcakes
(Adapted from Rose Red Velvet Cake in Rose Levy Berenbaum’s Rose’s Heavenly Cakes)
Makes 24 cupcakes

For the cake:

1 large beet, peeled
3 large egg whites, at room temperature
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 cup granulated sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons natural cocoa powder, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup grapeseed or canola oil
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup buttermilk

For the frosting:

8 ounces cream cheese, softened
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon creme fraiche or sour cream
Pinch of salt
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Set the rack to the lower-third position and preheat the oven to 350 F. Line two muffin tins with paper liners.

Run the beet through a juicer. Skim off any foam, and measure out 2 tablespoons of the juice. Whisk the beet juice and vanilla into the egg whites just until the color is evenly distributed.

Whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder, cocoa and salt in a medium bowl.

Mix the oil and butter together in a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment for 1 minute on medium speed. Add the flour and buttermilk, and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened, then increase the speed to medium and beat 1 1/2 minutes longer. Scrape down the bowl and add the egg mixture in two parts, beating 30 seconds on medium speed after each addition.

Using an ice cream scoop, evenly divide the batter among the cups. Bake for 16-18 minutes, until the tops spring back when pressed lightly. Cool for a few minutes in the tins, then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cupcakes are cooling, combine the cream cheese, butter, creme fraiche and salt in a food processor and pulse until smooth. Add the sugar and vanilla and keep pulsing until evenly incorporated. Spread the cupcakes with this frosting once they’ve cooled.

Notes:

If you’re less gunshy about fake food coloring than I am, you can replace the beet juice with the same amount of liquid red food color to get a really bright red cake, but if you’re going to do that, I’d go with the moister, richer Cook’s Country version.

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