Can't Be Beet

I went on a mandolin expedition this weekend. The purpose was to find one of those nifty adjustable ones so that I can get uber-thin slices of beets. Why, you query? Because I love raw beet salad.

The raw beet salad in discussion is made with raw beets, fennel, carrots, radishes, and celery. I forgot the basic proportions; it's a Jamie Oliver recipe which I totally cannot find right now. Raw beets are rather woody and hard to chew in large chunks, so mandolined slices (or julienned sticks) are most manageable. I tried using a food processor attachment and a veggie peeler, but the slices were a trifle too thick for woody beets, and grating them leaves you with limp, shapeless, shredded beet crud. I prefer a little extra chewing, so in the absence of a mandolin, I recommend the food processor attachment because it's faster than the veggie peeler and you get similar results. (I do not suggest the $10 mandolin from Bed Bath and Beyond. It is not adjustable, and it generally is crummy because the interchangeable attachments don't make paper-thin slices. I'm returning the blasted thing.)

I like salad a lot, so I start with ~4 peeled beets, 3 fat carrots, 1 small bulb of fennel (keep the fronds on hand), a handful of radishes, and 1-2 stalks of celery. Oh yeah, I couldn't find fennel anywhere, so I incorporated fennel seeds into the vinaigrette - more on that later**. If you can find fennel, make sure you slice it really thinly. Perhaps a mandolin would be good for this, too. Fennel has a very strong liquorice flavor, so add it carefully. Anyway, peel and thinly slice the beets and carrots, and give the celery and radishes a thin slicing, too. There's your salad. On to the vinaigrette!

Danny likes his roasted poblano chilis. A lot. Roasting poblanos is tricky. You can either own a dry grill which goes over the burners on your stove (Anti-Fire-In-Your-Kitchen-Tip: snip the stems off your chilis before roasting because they'll burn and the embers could set your shirt on fire), or you can balance them on your gas burners and keep the flame really low and watch them VERY carefully (risky, but I did it without setting anything on fire). You could probably do it in an oven too, but it's a lot harder to get some char without complete conflagration. Alternatively, save this for a BBQ side-dish and roast the chilis on the grill. When you roast chilis, the skin should char. The more char, the better. Once almost the entire chili has charred and is mostly black on the outside, put it in a bowl covered with foil or just make a foil packet and seal the chili inside. Let it steam in there for a while. 20 minutes, maybe? The steaming makes it easier to peel. Once it's steamed and cooled off, peel it. The charred peel should come off very easily. It doesn't have to be perfect. Then, you can clean the chilis. The fire comes mostly from the ribs and the seeds, so get 'em out if you don't like the spice. Now you have cleaned, seeded chilis ready for vinaigretting!

(You can use regular bell peppers in the vinaigrette - which are actually super mild chilis! - and roast them the exact same way. Now you can make your own freshly roasted peppers! Whenever you want!)

So anyway, 2 roasted poblanos seem to work. Throw them into a blender. Add 1 part sour (lemon juice rocks in this case), 2 parts grease (olive oil for me), some salty (salt), and some pepper. Adjust to taste. It's a green thick vinaigrette. Put on salad, lightly sprinkle with some fennel fronds, and crunch away!

(**If you can't find fennel, take some fennel seeds - 1 or 2 tsp worth - and crush with a mortar and pestle or fold them in some aluminum foil and take a hammer to it. Add to vinagrette.)