One more thing to do with Beetroot Tops

I love greens and have no problem with eating vegetarian meals, providing I have a bit of Parmigiano to sprinkle over the top. This recipe has it all, as far as I am concerned. I have polenta, bechamel sauce and beetroot leaves fresh from my garden. Using my beetroot and turnips as dual purpose plants give me great satisfaction.

Baked Beetroot Tops and Polenta

Pre heat the oven to 200 deg

Prepare and cook the beetroot leaves. See link

Beetroot leaves

Cook the polenta. see link

MAKE GOOD POLENTA

Make the bechamel sauce according to your favourite recipe.

While still warm, layer the bottom of an ovenproof dish with polenta. Sprinkle parmigiano liberally. Spread the greens over the polenta and top with bechamel sauce. Repeat the layers until the dish is full. Drizzle sparingly with olive oil and sprinkle with more parmigiano.

Bake in the oven for 30 min until the top is golden and crispy. Serve immediately.

Turnip Leaves Pasta Sauce (you will never throw the leaves out again)

I did not take a picture but before you throw out your turnip leaves, try this:

Spaghetti con le Cime di Rapa

800g Fresh turnip leaves washed
6 Anchovie fillets (the salty ones packed in oil) use more if you love anchovie
2 Cloves of Garlic
i pinch of dried chili or a bit of fresh, not too hot
Dash of olive oil

Blanch the leaves in boiling salted water until the leaves have wilted. Chop the leaves and stems in to bite sized pieces. Drop the pasta in to the pot of boiling salted water. Start the sauce by putting the olive oil in to a pan big enough to hold the sauce and pasta, add the chili and garlic . When the garlic is soft add the anchovies and stir until dissolved. Add the leaves, stir once or twice while cooking – about 5 minutes should do it. When the pasta is al dente (not sloppy) add the pasta to the sauce in the pan and stir once. Serve immediately with a bit of Parmigiano over the top.

We also eat this sauce as a side with meat.

Sunday Lunch from my garden

Just out of the oven: beetroot, turnip, whole garlic and rosemary, drizzled with a bit of olive oil, covered with foil and baked at 200 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Sunday lunch from the veg patch. I harvested several beetroots and (accidentally) one turnip. I cut the leaves from the bulbs but left about 1cm to stop the bulb from bleeding, washed the leaves well and put them in the fridge . The leaves will make another dish some time during the week. It took a bit of scrubbing to get the grit out of the beetroot without damaging the skin too much but that is one of the joys of backyard farming – the supermarkets stock things that have been cleaned/preserved/chemically bombed and one does not have to spend so much time on washing! I put everything in the pan and in to the oven. The taste was wonderful and the thick, rich beetroot juice mixed with the garlic and rosemary flavours on the bottom of the pan was sopped up with a bit of bread. The garlic is soft and spreadable and can be eaten with bread or squeezed out of the skins to eat on its own. What have I missed? The glass of red, of course!

Gaint Puffball

Roses are not my favorite plants (rose petals are not that nice), but my nabour’s rose bush has scored some major browny points today. As he went out to pick a rose for his dear wife, he found TWO Gaint Pufballs (Calvatia gigantea) growing under the rose bush. One of which he was kind enough to bring to me for dinner. Cutting it into strips then dipped in egg and fried with a few strips of pancetta mixed with tagliatelle makes wonderful “Tagliatelle ai Funghi” His wife unfortunately is still waiting on her roses.