You’ve got your “reduce, reuse, recycle” t-shirt on (or maybe one like mine that says “let’s talk trash”) and you’re feeling good because you have a compost in the backyard and a child that eats raw carrots and crispy beans with an easy bribe of 5 jellybeans meant for Easter and you’re pushing your cart through the vegetable aisle. You come upon the beets still stuck to their leafy greens and you look around for a trash can so that you don’t have to waste perfectly good space with them in your vegetable drawer.
And then a little bee gets stuck in your bonnet.
Somebody somewhere down the line told you you could eat those greens. You could get two for the price of one when you bought beets for your juicer or beets for your borscht&fage or beets to shred and saute w/fennel seed&garlic&shallot& paper thin shavings of parmesan.
You can eat the greens. You should eat the greens. If for nothing else: to stay regular. Throw up your arms like they do on the sidelines of a football game and then keep your elbows out and your hands together for the “penalty, oversharing sign”–but it’s true–beet greens work like a charm.
My favorite: puree them into potato leek soup and then finish the soup w/ nudge of gorgonzola or any blue veined cheese from a cow or ewe.
Peel 4-5 good sized, looking yukons and clean and chop 3 new leeks. Saute both for just 5 minutes in olive oil and a little butter. Add a thyme sprig, bay leaf, half a celery stalk, a parsley sprig or nothing and barely cover with water. Simmer with a lid on until the potatoes are completely tender. Remove the bay leaf, celery and thyme sprigs. In a little sauce pan on the side, bring water to the simmer and add the whole bunch of beet greens. Simmer for 3 minutes. Drain well and add to the soup. Cook for another 2 minutes and then puree, using an immersion blender. Taste for salt, pepper and for extra pleasure, grate on a teeny weeny bit of nutmeg. Get it into bowls and drop a few good pieces of gorgonzola onto each.
Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.
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