Winter farm share, second pickup

[magid]

This was rather similar to the last pickup: carrots (regular and rainbow), red beets, chioggia beets, starburst purple daikon radish, gold potatoes, a bag of fresh local organic Mi Tierra Tortillas, and a bag of Baer’s dry beans (I chose yellow-eye peas over Jacob's cattle beans or soldier beans).

I'm considering fridge pickling the daikon, partly to see whether I can get a purple brine out of it. I'm generally not as fond of chioggia beets as other kinds.

This is the last pickup in this calendar year; next year it runs every other week through early March.

Comments

[cellio]

Got any recommendations for beets? (I assume the dark ones I got today are red; I haven't scrubbed one to see what I find yet.)

[magid]

It's a good assumption; usually it'll be mentioned if they're anything but red.

I like roasting them, either solo, or with onions/carrots/sweet potatoes/potatoes/other root veggies. They can be a side as is, or put into a salad, maybe with lettuce, walnuts, and feta.

My favorite new beet recipe was a canning one, a beet and red cabbage relish that is great to cook with meat and keep it moist.

You can shred it and put in a fresh salad/slaw.

For some reason I don't care for their texture in soup, but most people who like beets seem to; there are tons of borscht recipes out there, ranging milchig-pareve-fleishig.

They also make fine pickles.

Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

If the daikon brine doesn't purple on its own, throw a beet into it.

Re: Well ...

[magid]

Oh, but that's a magenta. I'm interested to see whether the purple in this is strong enough on its own. (It's that purple that, when I see it partially in potatoes, often cooks out, or turns an unappealing color, but when I cooked one last time, it stayed colorful, so I'm hopeful.)

Re: Well ...

[ysabetwordsmith]

Ah, more of a blue-violet. It will be fun to see how the daikon turns out.

Re: Well ...

[cellio]

Daikon comes in magenta? I learned something new today. (When you said purple brine I assumed you meant with a beet, too.)

Re: Well ...

[magid]

No, daikon comes in "starburst purple," which means some is purple and some is white, and the purple is more on the violet end of the intensity spectrum (not the violent end, though :-). Since it had held color during roasting last time, I'd hoped for violet pickles, but alas, they seem to have somehow turned the brine into approximately the same red that happens from red radishes (?).