Beets | Favorite Recipe for This Nutritional Root Vegetable

At a recent farm-to-table dinner at the Gibbet Hill Grill in Groton, Massachusetts, I found myself in deep conversation about beets with Bill Adler. He’s a bigwig in the hip-hop music world and an encyclopedia of information on myriad subjects. He’s also a beet fanatic. His wife, Sara Moulton, a celebrity chef, isn’t.

“There was a great meeting of cultures in my house,” Bill laughed. “After Little League baseball practice, the great American sport, my Russian parents would give me a tall glass of cold beet juice—instead of milk or lemonade—and I loved it.”

Sara’s face puckered in distaste, quickly changing to a smile. “I love my husband,” she said, “so I had to figure out a way to embrace the beets. I came up with a recipe that even I can’t resist.”

Sara, a former executive chef at Gourmet magazine and now host of a popular PBS cooking show called Sara’s Weeknight Meals, riffed on taking a common salad combination—roasted beets, walnuts, and goat cheese—and serving it with pasta. This dish is arrestingly beautiful on the plate, rich and creamy without gobs of fat, easy, quick (the beets go in raw), and vegetarian. (Swap out the feta and substitute a dairy-free ingredient and it’s even vegan.)

As for us, we’re crazy for these root vegetables–they’re earthy and sweet, and come in oh-so-beautiful colors, from deep, purply reds to rich, egg-yolk yellows to silly pink-and-white-striped. All are filled to capacity with vitamins and other nutrients that promote heart, liver, and colon health. See more beet recipes.

Annie Copps

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