Have you ever cooked beets?

 

One day last week I was going to Central Market and Jean was coming for supper, so I was free to cook whatever I wanted. Usually when my family is out and Jean is here, I like to experiment. She’s a good audience for things they won’t touch. But this day I had decided on a sheet pan dinner of spinach, artichoke hearts, and salmon.

The trip to Central Market changed my mind. Guess what did it? Lovely fresh beets with beautiful, lush greens attached. I couldn’t resist. But the thought of salmon and beets in the same pan—or on the same plate—was not appealing. I repeat this a lot, but my mom always told me food is half eaten with the eye. My eye was offended at the color combination, so I switched to cod.

Beets are one of those things that people either love or hate. Jean and I both love them. Perhaps you mom made Harvard beets, cooking the vegetable in a sweet-and-sour sauce. Maybe you had canned beets. Maybe you never ate them. Even if you like them, you may not have ever cooked raw beets.

First step is to separate the beets from the greens—cut the stems at the beet, leaving maybe an inch. Rinse the greens and let them drain. Peeling raw beets is at best an exercise in frustration and at worst, impossible. My mom always boiled them, and Aunt Reva—that wonderful country cook who taught me so much—showed me that if you boil them and let them cool until you can handle them, you can hold them under running cold water and the peel slides right off.

But I like roast beets better than boiled these days. Scrub the beets thoroughly to remove any dirt that may cling. Then if you prefer, cut a square of foil for each beet, coat with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper—bake at 400 about an hour. Beets are done when you can easily slip a fork into them. For the sake of simplicity and shrinking my footprint on earth, I omit the foil. Just coat the beets lightly in olive oil and bake. The bigger the beet, the longer it takes to cook, so try to get similar sizes. Some recipes suggest cutting beets into sections for faster cooking, but cutting a raw beet is as difficult as peeling it. The day I cooked them I had a couple of large beets that took well over an hour—just keep testing with that fork every few minutes.

Once they are soft, you can peel and do whatever with them. They are fully cooked at this point, but my mom used to slice them and put them in a saucepan with a bit of water and the greens. When the greens wilted, she served them with vinegar. I prefer lemon and butter—and salt. One warning: cooked beets are juicy and the juice stains (it is often used as a natural dye). Be careful of wooden cutting boards, clothes, etc.

Last week I cut the beets into chunks instead of slicing. Here’s what I did for the sheet pan supper:

Ingredients:

3 good-sized beets, with greens (washed)

Olive oil as needed

Lemon butter – about four Tbsp. butter seasoned to taste

One loin or filet of cod (about 12 oz.)

           Line a sheet pan with parchment paper. Lay the greens out on the parchment. Drizzle olive oil over the greens, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Cut the cod into serving pieces (I had enough for each of us for supper and some left for my lunch the next day). Arrange the fish on the greens, and then place beet chunks artistically between the fish pieces. Season fish with salt and pepper. Roast at 350 for 20 minutes. Test at center of thick piece of fish to see if it flakes easily.

While fish is cooking, melt butter and mix with lemon juice to taste. The juice of a half lemon should do it for most people. Add a pinch of salt and pepper. If, like me, you can only use one heating element at a time (either the toaster oven or the hot plate but not both) you might want to make the butter sauce ahead and just give it a stir at serving.

Plate greens (they will appear shriveled and will be a bit crisp but delicious), fish, and beets. Drizzle lemon sauce over all.

Note: we always think of beets as dark red, but they do come in gold and some shades in between, with almost no difference in taste.

 

The best dinner ever…

 

Picture from The New York Times online cooking column

A few days ago, I bragged on the cooking skills of one of my grands; today I want to brag on my own cooking. The other night I fixed one of the best dinners I’ve done in a long time. In fact, Jordan pronounced it “the best dinner ever,” and Jacob liked it well enough to request the recipe for a file he’s keeping of things he really likes. It was baked cod with a buttery cracker topping.

My local family loves salmon—and those shrimp I’m allergic to—but they weren’t much on fish in general. I sauteed Dover sole one night, but it is as fragile as it is delicate in flavor and fell apart so that we ended up with fish hash—tasty but no eye appeal. The last time I tried cod I overcooked it, so we swore off it for a while. But the other night I got it just right—done enough for Jordan who has a horror of raw, yet still moist and flavorful. And it looked terrific. I am so sorry I forgot to take a picture, but I have “borrowed” the one that came with the recipe.

Cooking hint: when cooking fish filets with crumb topping, spread a thin layer of mayonnaise on the fish before adding the topping. It both hold the crumbs in place and keeps the fish moist. This is my addition and not in the recipe. Texas residents may remember the Black-Eyed Pea chain of restaurants and particularly their whitefish with crumb topping. I learned the mayo tip from them, I think.

Cooking hint two: for buttery crackers, you can’t beat Ritz original.

The crumb topping for this recipe was seasoned with plenty of butter, lemon zest and juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and chives (I used green onion tops). You can find the recipe here: Baked Cod With Buttery Cracker Topping Recipe - NYT Cooking (nytimes.com) I hope the paywall doesn’t keep you out.

The topping was so good on its own that I used it the next night to make salmon patties from my last can of good salmon, canned fresh where it was caught on the Oregon coast. (I hope to be able to order more in the spring when the salmon run again.) Salmon patties are a favorite from my childhood, and I often make them just for me. Mom called them croquettes, insisted on nothing but saltines for binding ingredients together, and then rolled the little round logs in more crushed saltines. I found the croquette shape to hard to deal with, patties much easier, and forgot the idea of a crumb coating. I also switched to Ritz crackers—they crush easily into fine crumbs. Ordinarily I season with salt and pepper, maybe a bit of dry mustard and a dash of Worcestershire, but with those already seasoned crumbs I just added egg to the salmon and then enough crumbs to make a mixture that would hold together. Usually it’s one egg for a 7 oz. can of salmon; last night, because my eggs were small, I used two.

With both the cod and the salmon cakes, I served a lemon/butter sauce: You can find it here: Lemon Butter Sauce Recipe (Versatile & Easy) | Kitchn (thekitchn.com) If I’ve said it before, it’s worth repeating: kitchn.com is a terrific source of recipes—and cleaning tips, though the latter don’t interest me nearly as much.

Next on my fish list: either salmon piccata or salmon with spinach and artichoke hearts. Wish I felt like splurging on lobster.

Something’s fishy

 

An embarrassingly amateurish photo
of filet of sole with asparagus

My family recently announced that they were ready to widen their menu horizons with the addition of some fish other than salmon, which we love and eat often. They mentioned halibut, which is expensive, and I’ve never successfully cooked. I think I have an awful memory of my mother poaching halibut in milk, but then, she would have been first to tell you she was not a good fish cook.

Tilapia is popular, but I will not cook it—and I am surprised to see it on upscale restaurant menus, where I feel the owner/chef should know better. Plain and simple: tilapia is bad for you. Because it is bottom-feeder and will eat any refuse, it causes inflammation and is particularly dangerous for patients with any of the auto-immune diseases, which seem to be more common every day. Tilapia is generally farm-raised, contains more toxic chemicals, is fed a synthetic diet, sometimes artificially colored.

A filet of sole is one of my favorite fish—mild with a delicate flavor. But it is also fragile. I’ve sauteed it for the family, trying for a nice crust, and more often than not ended with fish hash. So they said, “No more.” But one night recently it was to be dinner on your own, so I got a half pound of sole. About the same time, I saw a recipe for parmesan-crusted, lemon pepper tilapia. Great, I could just substitute sole. But the more I thought about it, the less appealing that recipe was. I don’t use lemon pepper—plain salt and pepper and a squeeze of lemon for me, thank you. Lemon pepper, again, is full of preservatives and things I don’t want to know about. And the idea of pressing parmesan into that delicate fish was challenging.

Two things I took away from the recipe: Bake the fish rather than sautéing it, and spread with a thin layer of mayonnaise to keep the fish moist and fix the parmesan to it. I decided against the mayo because I like the flavor of sole so much (but I will try the mayo trick with cod, and I hear it works on pork chops). So here’s what I did;

Baked filet of sole

Sole filets, about 1/3 lb. per person

Salt and pepper

Buttered panko or other breadcrumbs

Parmesan cheese

Line baking pan with foil and lay the fish out on it. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with breadcrumbs and some parmesan. Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes (the filets are quite thin, and you don’t want to dry them out). Serve with lemon wedges. For a side, I sauteed some tiny, fresh asparagus in butter with a splash of soy.

Jordan came along and ate one of the four pieces I cooked. I ate two and had one for lunch today—it was just as good as last night, maybe better. In retrospect, though, I think I’d leave out the parmesan and just use the breadcrumbs.

So what fish will I cook for the family? I’m not sure. Cod and ocean perch are reasonably priced choices, though I’d probably stick with cod. It’s versatile, and you can do a lot with it. Branzino, or sea bass, is another good choice—hmmm, wonder if I could sell them on a whole roasted fish? If it has the head on, Jordan will have nothing to do with it, but I could have the fishmonger trim head and tail. I’ll watch for sales on halibut or red snapper or trout. And I bet more salmon will appear on our table—Christian loves to grill it.

Don’t be afraid of cooking fish. Remember one cardinal rule: overcooking it is a sin.

Fish Hash

 

What fish hash looks like when I accidentally make it

Sounds awful, doesn’t it? No worries. This is not a recipe for fish hash, at least not in the usual sense. But it is about cooking fish and lessons learned.

My mom was a wonderful cook—except when it came to fish. A child of the landlocked Midwest, she loved seafood and fish, but my Canadian father retained enough of the Brit about him that he wanted a roast of beef or leg of lamb with potatoes. That’s what she cooked. The only fish I remember her cooking was halibut which she poached in milk—you’re right, it’s not my best memory of Mom’s cooking.

I inherited Mom’s taste for fish. We had neighbors who became my adopted aunt and uncle and used to take me to their country club for dinner. Invariably I ordered fish, and she, a devout Catholic, said, “Oh, honey, you don’t have to do that. It’s not Friday.”

So here I am, master of my own kitchen for some sixty years, and I’m still tentative about fish. This does not include canned tuna and salmon, which I fix in a variety of ways all the time. And it does not include salmon that Christian does a masterful job of grilling.

But, fish. Recently I followed a recipe for baked cod. It met with medium success.

Baked cod

I’ve had more luck with sole, which to me is the most delicate, most succulent fish—and it’s reasonably priced. Delicate not only in taste but also in texture—and therein lies the problem. Despite following directions to the letter, sole falls apart in the skillet when I try to sauté it, and we end with fish hash—wonderful flavor, but no eye appeal. And food, Mom always said, is half eaten with the eye. Jordan chose sautéed fish for its crust over the crustless baked, which is easier to do but not as delicious. 

The other night, though, I had medium success sautéing filet of sole. Here’s what I did.

Sautéed filet of sole

1.5 lbs. sole

Butter

Salt and pepper

Flour

White wine

Lemon

Salt and pepper filets to taste. Lightly flour (shake a little flour on them and gently rub it in with your fingers). Here’s the trick: I had been cooking fish on medium low (275)  on my hot plate, because the induction hot plate heats quick and fast. This time I put it on medium (375) and the fish held together better. If you don’t have one, quick get a fish spatula—makes all the difference.

I had to do the fish in two separate batches, which presented a warming problem—if I use hot plate and toaster oven at the same time, I trip a circuit breaker. So I warmed the oven, then sauteed the fish, and kept the first batch in the still-warm toaster oven.

When the fish was all sautéed (and some of it will still be hash) and in the oven, I poured a glug of white wine in the skillet (glug is, I think, Sam Sifton’s measurement from the New York Times cooking columns—the true definition is the gurgling sound liquid makes when poured, which tells you nothing about measurement). I’d say a Tbsp. or two of wine, enough to loosen and scrape up the crusty bits from the skillet. Add a good squeeze of lemon and a dollop or two of butter (you can see how precise this is) and let it all make a sauce. Pour over the fish and serve—and just forget to mention the word hash.

Even the teenager at our house ate this, and Jordan and I enjoyed it the next day for lunch. I will confess we had salmon two days later, and they had just returned from New Orleans where they ate lots of seafood and fish, so the plea was, “No more fish for a while.”

But that sole sure was good.